aw 

1 

il 



1BH 




Glass _.CX21£ 

Book JL- SH E 3_ 



' 7^3. 



M EM O R I A L 



<>i< 



SAM DEL EELLS 






.4 






*> 



CLEVELAND, OHIO : 

COBB. ANDREWS & CO., Publishers. 
i873- 



IN EXCJH^NCE 






Cleveland, ( )hio : 
PRESS OF LEADER PRINTING COMPANY. 



LC Control Number 




1 



tmp96 028898 



PREFACE 



It will be asked why a Memorial Volume is published when he whom it honors has 
been dead more than thirty years, and these few words of explanation are given in 
_ answer. 

At the time of his death none of the family of Mr. Hells were fitted to attempt the 
work now undertaken, nor did they really know to whom to entrust it, since they were 
personally acquainted with but few of his intimate friends, and he made choice of no 
one for such a service. 

After conference, however, with those who were interested in the publication of some 
tribute to his memory, the material necessary was placed in the hands of a very able 
gentleman, who was a warm personal friend ; and he expected to prepare a book for 
which many were anxiously waiting. The pressure of business engagements obliged 
him to delay this labor of love for some time, and before he had made much progress in 
it, though having had the papers two or three years, he was himself removed by death. 

The brother who now offers this volume to those who still cherish the name with in- 
terest, then obtained the materials which could be gathered, more for his own satisfac- 
tion than witn any thought of ever compiling them in this manner; supposing that 
most of those who had respected and loved their author, had during so long an interval 
lost the desire for such a memorial of him. Of late, a large number of those especially 
who have become familiar with his name- and learned something of his spirit through 
their connection with the Alpha Delta Phi Society, have urged that even at so late a 
day an effort should be made to embody what remain of his writings and history. 

It is in obedience to this solicitation and as a token of a brother's still-glowing affec- 
tion that this work is completed. There is no other attempt than that in it the man of 
whom it speaks, as far as possible, may write his own memoir ; the grateful task of the 
compiler being to arrange the matter and so connect the parts as to render the whole 
intelligible and attractive. Respecting the articles and addresses which are inserted, it 
should be said that they were selected not merely because of their intrinsic merit, but 
also as adapted to present their author's sentiments and feelings at the different eras of 
his life where they are introduced, and as furnishing a pleasing variety of subjects and 
composition. Regret may well be expressed that with the lapse of years so much has 
Keen Lost that might have added interest to the book at an earlier day ; yet it is believed 
to those who will welcome it, there will be enough presented to reward the desire that 
even so much be rescued from oblivion. 

1'n pared amidst the exhausting cares and duties of professional life, the work is 
offered to those who knew, and to those who honor him, to whose memory it is devoted. 

JAMES EELLS. 



IN MEMORIAM. 



CHAPTER I. 



HIS KAKLY LIFE. 



QAMUEL EELLS was born in Westmoreland, Oneida 
^ county, New York, on the 18th of May, 1810. His 
father was Rev. James Eel Is, for many years pastor of the 
Congregational Church in that town, and lie was third in a 

family of seven children. The culture and habits of his 
home were eminently adapted to his peculiarities of mind 
and heart during the opening years of his life, and he was 
wont to refer to the influences that affected his childhood as 
having determined his whole career. Because of the pleas- 
ures and restraints, attended by the judicious instructions, of 
the domestic fireside, he grew up without any of those 
vicious habits to which many are addicted while they are boys, 
and he was ever devotedly attached to his kindred by blood. 
This was the more remarkable on account of his natural self- 
reliance and independence, and affords proof in his boyhood 
of that union of an affectionate disposition with a vigorous 
intellect, which was so pleasing in his mature years. He 
was admirably qualified to be a leader, in whatever circle lie 
might be, winning by the kindness that always was prominent, 



2 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

exciting interest by his wit and genius, and swaying by the 
acknowledged force of his character and mind ; so that be- 
ing chief among the young persons of his native village he 
furnished occasion to not a few of the prophets who cast his 
horoscope, to predict a brilliant career for one who so often 
delighted and surprised them by his exhibition of rare gifts. 
When he reached his fifteenth year, however, there seemed 
to be danger that all these predictions of rustic admirers, and 
the more rational hopes of his parents and friends would be 
disappointed. Though quick in all his mental action, and 
learning with ease when giving himself to study, he was not 
fond of severe application to books. This Avas owing partly 
to the mercurial structure of his mind, and partly to the fact 
that he had been confined strictly to study since he was four 
years of age, and he had not yet begun to feel the pressure of 
that ambition which afterwards wrought so mightily upon 
him. In accordance with his inclination to form his own 
plans and reach his own conclusions, while always respectful 
toward others, he suddenly announced his desire to leave 
school, abandon the prospect of a liberal education, and devote 
himself to some more ordinary pursuit in life. Had his father 
been less wise in his manner of receiving this announcement, 
there would have been no occasion for this sketch of his life. 
Well aware, however, of his nature, and judging that absence 
from books for a time, and the lapse of a year or two would 
be likely to teach him what would be taught with difficulty by 
either preceptor authority, he adopted a course which resulted 
most favorably. Selecting a fanner with whom he could 
trust his son, he placed him under his care in the spring 
season, Samuel being well pleased with the coveted change 



I [is EARLY LIFE. 6 

from school to work. The effect of the change was most 
happy in several particulars. His constitution, which had 
never been firm, was rendered much more robust by his new 
mode ot' life; he acquired habits of industry which never left 
him, and although not until lie had persevered through two 
summers of farming, lie was at last entirely willing to recom- 
mence his studies with the purpose to enter college. 

In the spring of 1826 he entered the Clinton Academy, 

then under the care of Mr. Wilmarth. This teacher 

succeeded in firing him with new interest in all departments 
of education, and while with him his young pupil became 
fully possessed of that spirit which heeded no difficulties and 
hesitated before no task. Especially did he discover at this 
time an unusual talent for declamation and creditable facility 
in composition, quite surprising himself by his success. The 
first production of his own which lie exhibited in public was 
a eulogy on Henry Kirke White, which in its style both 01 
rhetoric and elocution, was regarded by those who heard it as 
indicative of great promise. The fact that on the threshold 
of his own short career, he should have been in such sympathy 
with that brilliant young poet whose genius really destroyed 
[he frail body by which it was represented, may almost be 
considered prophetic of what would be true of himself. 

In August, 18:27, he became a member of the Freshman 
class in Hamilton College, but in a few months his health 
failed, and it was doubtful whether he could continue his 
studies. About the same time some difficulty occurred re- 
specting a portion of the college officers which somewhat 
affected his interest in the institution, and with the hope that a 
change would take place within the year, he decided, by the 



4 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

advice of his parents, to suspend his course for that length of 
time at least, and endeavor to recruit liis health. 

It was determined that he should go to the sea side or take 
a sea voyage, and notwithstanding the difficulties which 
attended it since his father was unable from his slender re- 
sources to render him assistance, he left home in April follow- 
ing to make the experiment. It was his first departure from 
home for any extended absence, and the trial was severe. At 
that time it was no small journey from the central part of 
New York to Connecticut. In his feeble condition he was 
obliged to travel alone, to be separated from those who were 
exceedingly dear to him with the doubt whether he would ever 
see them again, and for the first time to care for his own for- 
tunes in the great world. It was not with a light heart that 
his eyes lingered as long as possible upon the quiet scenes that 
had constituted to him a large part of the world, and when 
the last view was taken and he passed into new and unfamiliar 
regions, he greeted the prospect before him with a gush of 
tears. A good part of the journey was made on foot, and he 
reached New Haven without any remarkable interruption of 
the monotony which marks that primitive mode of traveling. 
Soon he had opportunity to make a trip to Chesapeake Bay, 
and the first letter he wrote to his parents after he left them 
was written directly after his return from this short voyage. 
In it he says : " I left New Haven on board the sloop Heroine, 
for Norfolk. I could not wish for kinder treatment than I 
received from the captain of this vessel, and while I was on 
the water I felt strong and vigorous ; but as soon as Ave 
arrived in port I began to have a pain in my breast, and some- 
times was worse than I had been before. I find that a short 



HIS KAKLY LIFE. 

trip will not do me any essential good. My friends tell me I 
ought tobeon the salt water a whole year, without coming in 
sight of land ; but I think that would be really too hard." 

With the purpose to find a vessel bound on a longer voyage 
he went to New York at once, though he was not aware; that 
he knew any one in that city. Boy that lie was, and even 
then struggling with the disease which threatened to take his 
life, we may imagine his feelings when he set toot on the dock 
of the crowded metropolis and found himself in the solitude 
of such a throng who cared nothing- for him. He writes: 
" For a day or two I purchased my meals at the market, and 
spent all my time in looking for a ship. I worked as hard as 
ever I did. At night the bottoms of my feet were almost. 
blistered, and my spirits were weighed down with the reflec- 
tion that my best efforts were fruitless, as I found that none 
would take me even on a fishing trip of two or three months 
for less than ten or fifteen dollars." Accidentally he met a 
friend of his family who was a merchant in the city, and when 
his stock of money was reduced to a very small sum, he was 
rejoiced by an invitation from this gentleman to remain at his 
house while staying in town. By the aid of this friend he 
soon made arrangements for a passage to France, and while 
waiting for the ship to sail he wrote a letter to his parents 
which illustrates some of his characteristics in a marked man- 
ner. It would have been natural for a boy of seventeen, 
having a little leisure in New York, and with a keen relish 
for things new and strange, to spend a portion of his time, at 
least, in sight-seeing j but he preferred other pleasures. "I 
have divers occupations about these days, sometimes keeping 
store, sometimes writing, sometimes walking, sometimes 



G MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

painting, and the rest of the time studying Algebra. lam left 
to dig it all out myself, and so I understand it as I go along. 
If I make my intended voyage I shall take it with me, just 
for the sake of amusement, to pass away the time that would 
otherwise hang heavily on my hands. I do not know that I 
shall ever see home again, but I hope I shall, and till then, 
good-bye." 

For some unknown reason he failed to make his contem- 
plated voyage to France, and soon after left New York, 
and visited several ports on the Xew England eoast, hoping to 
find an opportunity to sail on a fishing cruise in the Northern 
waters. At last he succeeded in obtaining a passage, engaging 
to go as fisherman and give the captain one half the fish he 
should take. One incident connected with his stay on this 
vessel exhibits his strength of principle and ability to execute 
his own will, even when in so dependent a position. The 
captain and crew were utterly godless, and always fished on the 
Sabbath when they were on fishing ground. This Samuel 
refused to do, and was at first denounced for his superstition 
and then threatened for his obstinacy. He arranged the mat- 
ter, however, by agreeing that as there was another lad on 
board who was of about his own age, they would compare the 
amount of fish caught by each at the end of the season, and if 
Samuel should have less he would make up the deficiency to 
the captain from his own share. He was not a little gratified 
and strengthened to learn when the comparison was made, that 
although the other boy had fished every Sabbath, and he had 
not thrown out a line on that day, his number of fish was con- 
siderably the largest. This practical lesson was of value to 
his associates as well as himself. 



HIS EARLY LIFE. i 

With only a short interval after his return, lie made a second 
voyage to the coast of Nova Scotia, and come hack to New 
Bedford in October, feeling that he could go home with some 
assurance of ability to pursue his education. Money in small 
sums had been sent for him by his friends to several points, 
hut none of it had reached him, so that by his own industry 
economy and energy, he had defrayed his expenses, supplied 
himself with a new wardrobe, and apparently regained his 
health. In November he arrived at Westmoreland again, 
having been gone eight months, and welcoming with all the 
enthusiasm of his nature the familiar scenes of his native 
region, and the dear ones in his home, who had been ever iu 
his heart during his new and to him eventful experience. 

The discipline and education of this year, just at the period 
when they would have most influence, were probably of more 
importance as bearing on his future than the contributions of 
any other single year of his life. He had tested and learned 
himself, than which there is no. knowledge of more value to 
one who proposes to attempt an elevated career. lie had 
studied men ; and the lessons furnished him so early opened 
the way to success on many occasions of difficulty afterwards. 
He had come in contact with the rough world, and encoun- 
tered some of its severest tests of the human will and energy, 
and felt that he could face what might meet him hereafter 
without trembling, though no aid should be given him save 
that of the unseen Helper. The stripling who took his place 
in Hamilton College in the early winter of 1828 was very 
unlike the boy who was there the year before, and he was 
sood able to make his mark among the unusual number of 
brilliant young men who were at that time in the institution. 



CHAPTER II. 



HIS LIFE IN COLLEGE. 



IT is to be regretted that as respects this portion of his life, 
so little can be learned from papers left by Mr. Eel Is, or from 
those who were his associates. It is known that he was in a 
class which, though small, was distinguished for its number of 
those who became eminent men, and that he was cheerfully 
placed by them, as well as by the faculty, at its head. Rarely 
has a young man passed the ordeal of a college course, as to 
friendship or culture or attainment, with so much that might 
be recorded in his favor ; and rarely has one so fully appre- 
ciated the advantages thus brought within his reach. The 
ambition that possessed him during the last year in the acad- 
emy was not quenched by his absence for a year, and for his 
recreation on shipboard he seems not only to have studied 
Algebra, but to have reviewed all that would be requisite to 
thorough preparation for the race he anticipated. He rejoiced 
as a strong man to run this race. He expected much from 
communion with the classic authors, whose names had been 
familiar to him from his infancy. He entered the fields of 
mathematical and philosophical discipline, assured that grand 



ills LIFE TN COLLEGE. V 

harvests could be gathered from them. lie began the manly 
Strife of mind with mind, resolved that his own should be 
sharpened and better prepared for use in the more important 
struggles of after life. There was little romance in his appre- 
hension of what was before him, but a stern sense of the reali- 
ties to which he must address himself) and a purpose to gain 
the most from whatever might aid him in mastering them. 
It is believed that he had not an enemy among his fellow 
Students, and that he left the walks and halls of his Alma 
Mater, whose gifts and honors he bore with him, respected 
and esteemed by rivals and warmly loved by all whose real 
acquaintance with him had given them opportunity to test his 
mind and heart. The genuine love of college scenes and the 
cherished reverence for their power upon him by which be was 
ever distinguished, appear in a short account of a visit be 
made to Clinton six years after he graduated, in a letter to his 
familiar friend and college associate, Rev. Dr. A. C. Kcndriek : 
" I did snatch time enough to revisit the scenes of my early 
studies and youthful competition, and to experience the pleas- 
ures and the pains of memory. I arrived at Clinton on the 
afternoon of Wednesday, shook hands with Professors North 
and Lathrop, met the Union and Alpha Delta Phi Societies in 
the evening, had a most refreshing season, went into the 
chapel, libraries, eve., and trod once more; the sounding halls 
of my Alma Mater. The next morning, at break of day, a 
line, (leai' frosty morning in October, before a solitary student 
had rubbed his eyes open or thrown up his window for the 
fresh air, I stood on the top of the hill, and was surveying 
again that beautiful prospect which had imprinted itself on 
my mind in all the freshness of its coloring and the beauty of 



10 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS, 

its outline, and which in the retrospect ever returns to my 
eve blent with a thousand, strange and mingled memories. 
There was old ' Paris Hill/ with its scattered houses and 
patches of cultivation, its broken forests robed in the glory ot 
those rich autumnal dyes. There was ' thy sweet vale, Oris- 
kany/ stretching gracefully away to the eastward till it faded 
into the smoke of Utica and the Mohawk ; and beneath me in 
the quiet and sheltering valley lay the little village of Clinton, 
like a child in its mother's arms, still hushed in its soft repose. 
Those were golden moments, worth my whole journey east. 
I forgot that I was a lawyer. I flung my profession behind 
me in high scorn, repeated Coleridge's ' Hymn before sunrise 
in the vale of Chamouni/ and returned. That day I was 
again on my way toward the far West, having made only this 
mere call on Hamilton ; but did I not condense much of the 
essence of existence into those few hours ? I do hate to bid 
an everlasting adieu to the glorious region, sparkling with 
beauty, learning, love, and all that can furnish food for an 
intellectual nature. I think the Law a noble study ; but I 
assure you I choose it at an immense sacrifice; and as I plunge 
deeper and deeper into its vast and labyrinthian mazes, and 
find myself surrounded by its shadowy and doubtful twilight, 
instead of the pure and golden radiance of a classic sky, I 
experience a feeling of sadness in ray inmost soul, and cast 
many a longing look back to the pleasant land of the muses.'' 
Bearing on the same point, and showing how others were 
impressed by his enthusiasm respecting the influence of college 
upon him in after years, two letters may properly have place 
here from distinguished gentlemen who knew him well. The 
first is from Professor Edward North : 



II is LIFE IN COLLEGE. 1 1 

Hamilton' College, March 23, 1863. 

My acquaintance with Samuel Bells began in the fall <>f 1838, while I was 
a Sophomore in college. At that time he was visiting with relatives in 
Hampton, where his father had been settled in the ministry years before. 
One Wednesday evening Mr. Eells rode over to Clinton to attend a meeting 
of the Union Society, to which he was strongly attached. His speech on 
thai evening made an impression on my mind which no lapse of years will 
ever efface. What he said, and how he said it, are still a living memory to 
me, as they probably are to others. His manner was graceful, earnesl and 
impressive. He began by Baying : " I have been six weary years out on the 
busy, dusty, rattling highways of life, and it gives me joy to stand again in 
the quiet shadows of Gentle Mother." There was a certain magic in his 
eye and voice, 80 potent and searching, that before he had spoken a hundred 
words each one of his hearers seemed to himself to he singled out as the 
particular and only person addressed. Nor was there any lack of classic 
pleasantry in his speech; as when he quoted the familiar maxim, " Possu- 
mus quia posse videmur," and added the translation once given by "Long" 
Woodruff of the (lass of 1833, (who will take no offense at this, traditional 
prefix to his name). "We can, because we seem to can." When Mr. Eells 
closed his appeal to the young men before him to aim at high and unselfish 
n suits in the struggle of life, with a couple of lines from Willis — 

" The beautiful shall know the purer language of thy brow, 

And read it like a talisman of low,'' 

his own brow seemed to us all, who were sitting before him, to he radiant 
with unearthly beauty. 

Mi-. Eells pronounced his oration on the Progress of Civilization, the most 
finished ofhis efforts, in Julv, 1839,asa candidate for the degree of Master of 

Arts. It was soon after repeated at New Haven, Conn., before a Convention of 
the Alpha Delta Phi Society. He was then in poor health. Histrouble was 
dyspepsia, which he called " a Pandora's box with no hope at the bottom ;" 
but his audience saw no Bigns of ill health save in his pale, thin face, as lie 
stood before them on that memorable Commencement day. He spoke more 
than an hour without notes, and with no apparent effort to recall the words 
of his manuscript. Coming on toward the evening of a hot day, after the 
Beniora had made their orations, and the patience of the crowded audience 
seemed to he clear gone, his power as a popular speaker was put to a sever.' 



12 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EEL.ES. 

test. Yet it was wonderful to see now quickly a feeling of relief and 
delight was apparent on the faces of his hearers. The general effect of the 
oration may be described by saying that it caused each hearer to feel that 
life is a sublime drama, in which himself was invited to bear an honorable 
part. If any particular passages were more admired than others, they 
were those in which he pictured the French Kevolution and the landing of 
the Pilgrims. But as this oration will be embraced in your collection of 
your gifted brother's writings, I need not dwell upon it. 

George Langford, Jr., whose mind " was nursed upon the self-same hill," 
and whose sic itur ad astra was as brilliant as it was brief, used to say of 
Samuel Eells, that he never expressed a thought incompletely ; that even 
his offhand, unpremeditated utterances had a classic finish and point that 
made them fit to be laid away in the memory. 

But, unlike Coleridge, he was not always preaching. Among the tradi- 
tions of his college life is an anecdote that may give a glimpse of the humor- 
ous side of his character. At the club where he boarded, it was strongly 
suspected that the morning coffee was made of roasted barley, or some other 
home-raised cereal. After a night made hideous by a collision between the 
two lower classes, the keeper of the boarding house hoped that none of her 
boys were engaged. in it. Mr. Eells replied that a ceres of rows w T as cer- 
tainly to be deprecated ; but it was too much to expect that boys kept on 
grain would not be a litttle coltish and noisy at times. Mr. Eells was a fine 
classical scholar, and received the highest honor at his graduation ; but 
owing to the prevalence of the cholera at that time, no public exercises 
were held. He spent the winter of 1840-1 in Havana, and while there he 
mastered the Spanish language, which added largely to his fund of facts for 
entertaining conversation. It is to be hoped that you will find among his 
papers some record of this journey. 

Yours, very truly, 

Edward North. 

The other letter is from the much-admired and respected 
Professor when Mr. Eells was in college, afterwards Chancellor 
of the University of Missouri, and now deceased, Dr. J. H. 
Lathrop : 



II is LIFE IN COLLEGE. 13 

Columbia, Mo., April 12,1863. 

I am pleased to bear that a memorial of your brother, Samuel Eel Is, is 
to be prepared by your hands, in the shape of a volume of his literary 
remains, with a sketch of his life. 

Assuming an official connection with Hamilton College in the spring of 
1829, 1 found him a member of the Freshman class of that year. Fen 
classes in any college have a better record than this, in scholarly attain- 
ment and in the outgrowth of professional and public life. It is with much 
personal gratification that 1 recognize several names, now illustrating the 
public service, that once adorned the catalogue of that collection of emu- 
lous young men. Eminent among these was Samuel Eells. A distinction 
was his, not fitful and occasional, hut gracefully and firmly assured. With 
a mind capacious of the exact sciences and the material philosophies, he 
subordinated his acquisitions in these fields to the uses of a nature singu- 
larly, but beautifully and chastely aesthetic. The Literce Humaniores were 
more congenial to his tastes as a scholar. He dwelt long and affectionately 
amid the vestiges of the classic civilizations. Here he nurtured his spirit ; 
here his intellect wrought its discipline ; hence he drew that wealth of 
illustration with which he illuminated and adorned whatever he touched. 

Thus skilled and thus furnished, he entered the Held of moral and politi- 
cal philosophy with the loving spirit of the artist, and moulded the ele- 
ments of our Christian civilization into forms of phophetic beauty, which 
his earnest soul felt to be possible, nay, certain, to be realized in the social 
structures of the latter day. Nor was this, with him, a mere barren senti- 
ment. His faith in human progress was a motive power, which com- 
manded, on all suitable occasions, the wealthy contributions of his pen and 
his voice, in conservation and advancement of the useful, the generous, the 
humane. After graduation in 1S32, during a course of professional study 
and a few years of practice in the Courts of Cincinnati, he was withdrawn 
from my personal observation. His reputation at the Bar, it is well known, 
was deservedly high, and, had he lived, would have realized the promise 
of his youth. But it gives me pleasure to be able to testify, of my own 
knowledge, that the technicalities of an absorbing profession were power- 
lessto impair the genuineness of his manhood and the productiveness «i 
hifi philosophy. At the frequent calls of literary associations, he graced 
the yearly festivals of the Universities of the country, where scholars love 



14 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELES. 

to congregate ; and thousands who annually throng these greater games of 
our American civilization, still hold in living memory the seed-thoughts 
commended to their keeping and nurture by the faultless elocution of 
Samuel Eells. But few letters passed between us, and those of a character 
strictly personal. I have nothing from his pen which could reasonably 
claim a place in the collection you propose to make. But as one of his 
early instructors, I have thus briefly, but heartily, answered your call for 
ray impressions of his genius. As a mourner over his early grave, I have 
deeply felt that the world has need of such as he : but the Master who 
knows best had use tor a beautiful spirit in another sphere. 
Very truly, your friend, 

J. H. Lathkop. 

Similar testimony might be multiplied, were this necessary ; 
but it is not. The name of Mr. Bells is still mentioned on 
College Hill with interest and pride, and the savor of his 
scholarship and talents continues as a part of the valued her- 
itage of the institution he always honored and revered. The 
feelings with which, after completing his course of study, he 
looked forth upon life, are expressed in the closing sentiments 
of his Commencement address; and his personal affection for 
his associates found utterance in his Valedictory, neither of 
which were publicly delivered, for reasons mentioned already. 
An extract from this address will appropriately close what 
need he written respecting his college life. 

li What the world now wants is not so much the discovery 
of i new lights,' and the invention of new systems, as the dis- 
semination of the knowledge which. already exists treasured 
up only with the lew. Six hundred millions of human be- 
ings are to be enlightened and redeemed. This is indeed a 
mighty work ; but it is noble, glorious and worthy of the 
angels. Let then every man engage freely, cheerfully, and 
with all his powers, in elevating the social and moral condition 



HIS LIFE IN COLLEGE. 15 

of his kind. Let the man of science task his highest energies, 
and multiply his acquisitions, and make it the business of his 
life to bring his fellow-beings to his own elevated standard. 
Let the statesman and the philanthropist lake a discrimi- 
nating and comprehensive survey of the world, and exer! 
their united powers to relieve its wants, by throwing checks 
upon vice, and making universal the principles of rational 
liberty and of public! and private virtue. Let the Christian 
gird on his armor and march forth to fight the battles of the 
k King of kings/ and lead forward those mighty enterprises of 
Christian benevolence which the present age lias thrown upon 
his hands. Let each one, with those means, and in that 
sphere, which God has allotted him, and with a lofty and per- 
vading; consciousness of the moral dignity of his nature, act 
as a denizen of the world ; with his eve fixed on the substan- 
tial interests of the • human race and on future times. Then, 
and not till then, will the lessons of ages be ripening on the 
human mind, and calling all of every name to the harvest of 
the world. 

"There is nothing in the nature of this occasion which 
calls for unmanly tears or effeminate regrets. Let us re- 
flect that we stand, this day, before that mighty theatre 
whose drama is Life, and whose audience the World ; that it 
become- us to gird ourselves for its scenes, and to place a linn 
and steady loot upon its threshold. We cannot, however, and 
we would not, repress the sympathies which refuse to permit us 
to he stoics. Associated as we have been in the elegant pur- 
suits of literature and science, participating in the same labors 
and recreations, the same joys and sorrows, the same hopes 
and apprehensions ; the tit- of affection have entwined 



16 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

themselves with every fibre of our hearts. Yet they must now 
be sundered, and others will move to the seats which we have 
vacated, and draw lessons of learning and wisdom from the 
pages over which we have so often and so fondly lingered, 
nursing their dreams of early hope and young ambition, and 
gathering the sunshine of a cloudless future to cheer them in 
the solitude of their nightly toil. 

" But when our successors shall be thus acting over the 
scenes through which we have passed, and indulging the fond 
and fairy expectations which have thrown their fascination 
upon us, will our experience have proved that they were not 
the mockeries of life ? After we shall have mingled in the 
busy scenes of the world, and felt its chilling influences, and 
memory shall steal back over the golden years of our early 
studies, like the breath of Heaven over the chords of some 
long-neglected harp, shall we not find that hope is brighter 
than reality, and that time fails to perform the promises of 
youth ? 

" Let us beware of those extravagant anticipations which are 
as fatal to individual happiness as to the welfare of society. 
We stand on the shore of an untried and broad ocean. Our 
barks lie at their moorings waiting to waft us on our voyage. 
As the word of parting dies upon the ear, they swing off upon 
the wave. Fancy follows them on their diverging courses, 
now riding the mountain billows, and now gliding over an 
unruffled sea till they are lost in the distance of the wide 
waste. We may never meet again ; some of us may not even 
speak each other on the sea of life; still, let us hope this sepa- 
ration will not be eternal. We may be reunited in another 
and happier state of being. Let us prepare for that state by 



His LIFE IN COLLEGB. 17 

the faithful and conscientious discharge of our duties to God 

and our fellow men. Life is not an empty pageant ; and no 
man has the liberty to abuse it or to trifle it away. Their are 
duties growing out of the humblest relations. Let us fulfill 
those devolved upon u< with a sincere regard for the welfare 
of men, and according to the will of God. Then we shall 
meet again, where affection will be holy and perfect, and 
friendship unchanging and eternal ; where the mysteries 
which now hang over the natural and moral world shall be 
gradually unfolding to our astonished view, and where we 
may range together as on angels' pinions and with an angel's 
rapture the regions of immorality. Till we thus meet, ray 
beloved classmates, 1 bid you an affectionate and final farewell." 



CHAPTER III. 

HIS CONNECTION WITH THE ALPHA DELTA PHI SOCIETY. 

nnHERE is a large body of educated men in this country, many 
-*- of them among the most prominent in the departments of 
literature and science, and in the ranks of professional and po- 
litical life, who will feel special interest in these reminiscences, as 
the name of Samuel Eells has become familiar to them from its 
repetition in scenes which they remember with pleasure. 
These are the members of the Alpha Delta Phi Society, an 
organization which has been of so much value to those who 
have been connected with it that it is cherished with peculiar 
affection and respect, even after college days have long been 
passed. It was with feelings of deepest interest that Mr. 
Eells watched the growing prosperity of this Society, although 
it was hardly beyond its infancy at the time of his death. He 
believed it would be greatly useful, and nothing accomplished 
by him afforded him such satisfaction as the promise of the 
several chapters which were bearing the spirit of A. J. #. into 
the leading colleges of the land. 

He has given a short account of the circumstances which 
led to the formation of the Society : and as it will be read 



ALPHA DELTA PHI SOCIETY. I 9 

with interest by those thus related, for whom, indeed, for the 
most part, this memorial is prepared, it has been thought 
there can he no impropriety in its insertion here. As it was 
written, however, amidst the pressure of other engagements 
and in haste, and as some parts of* it are necessarily omitted. 
it will he seen that it is quite incomplete. 

"When T entered Hamilton College in the year 1<S'_?7, 
there were two Literary Societies in the institution, viz : the 
Phoenix and the Philopeuthian, afterwards called the Phi 
Gamma Alpha, and finally, from its junction with the Erving 
Society, the Union. Between these a strong and active rivalry 
had been maintained: and such, at the time I allude to, was 
their mutual jealousy and activity, that 1 almost determined 
to join neither. But importunity and persecution were only 
to he escaped by becoming attached to one or the other. I 
finally nave my name to the Philopeuthian ; hut the affairs of 
both had been so desperate during the unhappy condition of 
the college for some time previous to this year, that they pre- 
pared now for a mighty struggle for the vantage ground, as 
the whole institution seemed to breathe a new life. It is not 
necessary to detail the history of this struggle, which continued 
for three years, with abundant bitterness on both sides. So 
far was the competition carried that it took possession of the 
best academies in the State. Scarcely a student of any pre- 
tensions to scholarship presented himself for admission to col- 
lege who had not been solicited by both Societies. The means 
of persuasion were often of the most unscrupulous kind. 
Neither side hesitated to make; use of dissimulation and deceit, 
and degrading compliances, until college life exhibited a scene 
of jealousy and strife, in which he who could plan and 



20 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

successfully execute a low manoeuvre, or put upon a fabrication 
the guise of plausibility, became equally formidable to the 
opposite party and a favorite with his own. The effect of this 
state of things on the character of the students was deplorable, 
and among a few of us was a subject of common and frequent 
regret. It seemed to chill all the noble and generous affections 
of the youthful spirit, and destroyed or corrupted the very 
elements of honorable and manly character. Besides drawing 
off attention from study, it alienated bosom friends, divided 
classes, and embittered not only public exercises, but all asso- 
ciations for mutual improvement, whether moral, literary or 
religious. It was a contemplation -of these and similar evils, 
that first suggested to me the idea of establishing a Society of 
a higher nature, and more comprehensive and better princi- 
ples ; one that should combine all the advantages of a union 
for intellectual and literary purposes, and at the same time 
maintain the integrity of youthful character, and cultivate 
those finer feelings which it was the effect of college societies 
in general to extinguish or enfeeble. The undertaking was an 
arduous one. The obstacles to be encountered were formidable 
enough from the very nature of the enterprise, and were ren- 
dered much more so by the general distrust with which I was 
aware the plan would be received by those on whom I mainly 
relied. 

"In the first place, the new association must differ from 
others, in all points necessary to the exclusion of that jeal- 
ousy and angry competition which I had always felt to be the 
bane of college life. In the second place, it must be built on 
a more comprehensive scale than other societies, in regard to 
its intellectual proportions; providing for every variety of 



ALPHA DELTA PHI SOCIETY. 21 

taste and talent, and embracing every department of literature 
and science. In the third place, it must he national and uni- 
versal in it- adaptations, so as not merely to cultivate a taste 
for literature or furnish the mind with knowledge; but with 
a true philosophical spirit looking to the entire man, so as to 
develop his whole being — moral, social and intellectual. In 
the fourth place, it must be made a living, growing, self-per- 
petuating institution, which can be done only by stamping its 
whole character and arrangements with a great and manifest 
superiority to other societies, and by attaching its member- to 
it, by an indissoluble bond of union and binding them to real 
and personal interest in its welfare. Finally, its actual, visible 
organization must be deferred till the general plan can be 
thoroughly matured, every preliminary settled, every influ- 
ence secured, that may enable the enterprise to command 
assurance of success. 

Such is the outline of the Fraternity, as I had sketched 
it in the year 1830. But as yet it existed only in idea, 
when a circumstance induced me to hasten the attempt 
to clothe the idea with the outward forms of reality. In the 
fall of 1830, I think it was, a deputation from the Kappa 
Alpha of Union College endeavored, out of the two Literary 
Societies of Hamilton, to organize an associated branch of their 
own. The commission was executed with great secrecy, and but 
few students were consulted on the subject. I was one of these 1 
and I at once saw that it would interfere with my scheme. I 
found it necessary, therefore, to make a show of hesitation, with 
regard to the proposition, that I might, if possible, devise 
some way of defeating it. Most of those to whom the plan of 
the K. A. Society was disclosed, received it with favor: but 



22 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

in a small, private meeting, held for deliberation, means were 
found of dividing our counsels. The whole project was 
abandoned, and the delegates withdrew, disappointed and cha- 
grined. Immediately after this, I resolved to commence the 
trial of the new society. The first step was to select a very 
few of the most influential members of each Literary Society, 
to open to them cautiously the outlines of my plan, and enlist 
their co-operation. To my surprise, all approved it, and 
engaged in the undertaking with the utmost ardor. Secretly, 
and without any formal meeting, we pledged ourselves to the 
work. The first meeting was held at my room, No. 15, Back 
Middle, Kirkland Hall. All the persons selected were pres- 
ent ; but as it was only a meeting for consultation, no pre- 
siding officer was appointed and no minutes were taken. At 
a subsequent meeting, Lorenzo Latham and myself were 
appointed a committee to report a constitution and a badge. 
The whole of the constitution, as at first adopted, was drawn 
up by myself. We also reported a number of devices for a 
badge ; but none seemed to give entire satisfaction, and we 
were instructed to report again. In the second report, I sub- 
mitted several new models, among which was the Star and 
Crescent. They were to be made of fine gold. On the front 
of the Star were to be the letters A. J. #., and on the reverse 
a monument, with the sword and spear crossing each other and 
lying over the monument, with the edge and point turned up- 
ward. In each horn of the Crescent a delicate gold chain was 
to be fastened, the two chains meeting in the center of the 
Star. On the reverse of the Crescent, the member's name was 
to be engraved. 

"We were not entirely satisfied with this badge; but it was 



ALPHA DELTA PHI SOCIETY. 23 



the best that suggested itself at the time, and would answer a 
present necessity. It was, therefore, adopted, and for a year 
or more was worn as a pendant on the left breast, attached 
either to a guard-chain or a narrow ribbon. Just before I left 
college, in the year 1832, it was changed to the present form 
of the breast-pin." 

>: * * * * * :•: * 

Whether the earnest desires of its founder have been real- 
ized in the history of the A, J. <l>. Society, the general char- 
actor and success of its members, its uniformly high standing 
in the colleges where it has established chapters, and its present 
proud position, viewed from whatever point, may he taken as 
evidence. He thus hears witness to the advantage lie himself 
had gained from it a short time before his death : "She has 
done much for me ; I am indebted to her for many happy 
hours ; for an acquaintance with many a true and noble spirit ; 
for much social enjoyment ; and for much of whatever J have 
received of intellectual culture; and if I ever forget her, Met 
my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the 
roof of my month !' " 

Could he witness what it has since done, and what it is; awl 
look over the long list of honored names upon its catalogue, 
and know that no less enthusiasm and affection are manifested 
by those who now have its welfare in charge than were pos- 
sessed by the early members, he would have occasion to feel, 
even more positively than he did, that in nothing does his 
influence live with more power for good, than in the brilliant 
advance of this Society. It has always been the ally and 
advocate of thorough education, causing its stimulus to be ap- 
parent in the career of its members. It has been the friend of 



2-1 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

good order and just law in college discipline, by means 
unknown to others exerting its power in support of the right. 
It has promoted the purest and noblest friendship, by inspiring 
both confidence and love, and bringing men together in such 
a manner as to increase these for years. It has cultivated the 
most elevated morality, obliging those who are low or vicious 
among its brotherhood, to disregard its spirit and oppose its 
principles. In short, while professing no ability to communi- 
cate talent where it is not by nature, nor to remove depravity, 
which inheres in all, its history is proof that in a remarkable 
degree it has fulfilled the mission for which it was founded, in 
its eifect on the whole man, and through individuals upon 
society. 

By correspondence and personal effort, Mr. Eells aided in the 
formation of several Chapters, and saw them all make a most 
hopeful beginning. "While residing in Cincinnati, in order 
that in company with some of his most valued and intimate 
friends he might enjoy the advantages of the Society, he estab- 
lished the Chapter in that city, composed chiefly of graduate 
members. Those who were favored with a place in that circle 
of talented men remember w T ell the meetings, which so fully 
and beautifully exhibited, among kindred spirits, the peculiar 
benefits to be gained in no other company : while he himself 
was wont to regard them as second to none in their bearing 
upon his personal and professional career. 

Tt is worthy of note that his first published literary address, 
after he entered public life, was delivered before the Miami 
Chapter of the Society, in September, 1836, as in that Chapter 
were some of his most cherished friends. The theme of this 
address, moreover, reveals his interest in thorough education, 



ALPHA DELTA I'll I SOCIETY. '!■) 

- ggested as it was, by the powerftil attack made by the 
eloquent Grimke, a short time before, on the advantage of 
classical learning. It very properly has a place here, as the 
closing paragraphs make known his feelings respecting the 
Fraternity, and his ambition as to it- Influence. 



ADDRESS 



AT 



JA 



IAMI UNIVERSITY, 



OX THE 

STUDY OF THE CLASSICS. 



Gentlemen : — You have called me to address your associ- 
ation on the interesting occasion of its first anniversary. I 
most gratefully acknowledge the honor of your confidence : I 
only regret that my ability to serve you is so much less than 
my desires, and that the duties of this occasion should have 
fallen upon one who can bring to their discharge little else 
than good intentions. 

In casting about for a topic which might profitably occupy 
your attention for a few moments, I could not but reflect that 
the institution of which it is your good fortune to be members? 
is one erected on the most liberal foundation, and conducted 
by abilities every way equal to the task : — an institution for 
which the country has done much, and from which she expects 
much in return. Neither could I forget that here, in these 
halls, sacred to learning and education, there stood, not long 
since, one, who advocated an innovation upon the liberal 
course of instruction adopted here, so far as to exclude from 
that course the necessity of classical learning. AVe all 



A.DDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. J., 

remember with what ability, with what Learning, with what 
candor, with what earnest and fervid eloquence, he poured 
out on his favorite subject the riches of a mind, every* move- 
ment of which showed how largely it was indebted to the 
very studies which it could so ably and eloquently oppose. 
Most grateful would it be to my feelings, to pause here ; and 
drop a humble tribute to the memory of the scholar, the orator, 
the philanthropist, the Christian ; the man whose public vir- 
tues were equaled only by his private worth ; whom to know, 
was to venerate and to love. 

Well may we apply the beautiful and pathetic lamentation 
of Horace over Virgil, to the lamented Grinike — 

" . cui Pudor, et Justiae soror, 



[ncorrupta Fides, oudaque Veritas, 
Quando ullem invenient parein ! 
Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit." 

Let us tread lightly on the ashes of a good man. But to 
be human, is to be fallible: and he who is free from errors of 
judgment must be invested with the attributes of Omniscience. 
It i^ tin- from strange that an ardent and benevolent mind, 
catching eagerly the advancing and reforming spirit of the 
age, throwing- all its godlike energies into the work of human 
regeneration, should sometimes pass the limits of moderation 
and jeopardize the very cause which it labors to build up. 
Impressed with the conviction that such was the case in the 
instance alluded to, I have thought that an examination of 
sonic of the most popular objections urged against the study 
of the ancient Classics as essential to a svstem of collegiate 
instruction, might not be unsuitable either to the place or the 
occasion. 

Both history and philosophy teach us that the natural 



28 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

tendency of the human mind is to extremes. This melancholy 
fact has ever proved itself the formidable enemy of man. In 
morals, politics and religion, it has defeated the best concerted 
schemes of improvement, and will probably work, more than 
all other causes, to subvert the future efforts of philanthropy, 
and to retard the moral and intellectual progress of the human 
race. 

Advancement, doubtless, supposes correction, and reform ; 
but how to correct with a skillful and safe hand — how to 
reform without demolishing, is a grand moral problem — 
probably one of the latest lessons man will ever learn. 

It would be singular, indeed, if, in literature, especially in 
the history of modern improvements in education, it were not 
necessary to combat the same tendency to intemperate action : 
— that restless and revolutionary spirit, which, under the im- 
posing name of reform, undertakes the most alarming innova- 
tions upon principles and systems which have stood the test of 
time and experience. In the English and German Universi- 
ties, excellence in the Latin and Greek bears the palm of all 
acquirements. It continues to be the test of sound scholar- 
ship ; and the pupil is required to spend from seven to fifteen 
years of the flower and vigor of his life in a course of study 
of which these languages form the principal part. The expe- 
diency of this course may reasonably be doubted. It may, 
perhaps, be considered the extreme on that side of the ques- 
tion ; and is it strange that in this country, where it is mod- 
estly supposed that all improvements must originate, and all 
abuses must find reform if they find it at all, and we should 
push to the opposite; error and as a cure for the evil of the 
system, propose to dispense with the system itself? Such is in 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 29 

fact our real position. Though we have not paid to Classical 
Learning scarcely a tithe of the consideration with which it is 
regarded in the schools of Europe, we are now agitating it as 
a serious question whether it should not be entirely dispensed 
with as a necessary part of a liberal education. 

We do not undertake, however, to give the arguments in 
support of Classical learning. Its friends stand on the defen- 
sive. Its claims have long been acknowledged and revered ; 
and it is, perhaps, more easy, as well as more common, to col- 
lect the arguments in its favor, than to answer the popular 
objections with which it is assailed. These objections may be 
arranged under the following heads : 

First. It is dangerous in its moral tendencies. 

Second. It has little or no practical utility. 

Third. It is not American in its character and objects. 

Fourth. It is entirely useless to the great mass of the 
people. 

Fifth. It occupies much time which might be more profit- 
ably spent in other studies. 

Sixth. Ancient Literature is inferior to modern. 

Of each of these in their order : and — First — It is objected 
to Classical Learning that in its tendencies and influence it is 
immoral and corrupting ; and ought not, therefore, to be ad- 
mitted in our schools and colleges. This we consider by far 
the gravest charge that has been brought against Classical 
Learning: the very "head and front of its offending;" and it 
certainly deserves the most serious consideration. 

AVe might answer it in a short way by a single averment, 
viz : that every passage in the Classics objectionable on this 
ground may be omitted in the text books; and that in feet 



30 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

many of them arc omitted. That many passages still remain, 
particularly in the poets, open to the perusal of the young 
scholar, is only an argument that the work of expurgation 
should be carried farther than it is. 

But, admitting the whole ground of the objection, it may 
be observed in the first place, that whatever views were held 
by the ancients on the great subjects of divine government and 
human duty, a judicious instruction may turn even their dark- 
est superstitions to account, and subserve them to the best pur- 
poses of moral culture. And which is the more reasonable, 
To seal up the great intellectual storehouse of antiquity, or to 
take the youth by the hand and conduct him through its vast 
depositories of ancient learning, yet teaching him to separate 
the gold from the dross, and inculcating such lessons of prac- 
tical morality as the mind naturally draws from a survey of 
the errors and vices, the follies and crimes of a barbarous and 
unenlightened age ? 

Let it not be said that this separation cannot be made. 
Moral good and evil are not so similar that they cannot be 
distinguished under a judicious system of education : and if, 
in the present state of society, with all its boasted light and 
improvement, with its high moral action and Christian institu- 
tions, we cannot admit the student to the treasures of Classical 
learning, spreading out before him all the vast variety of its 
golden stores, and at the same time shield him from their cor- 
rupting influences on the character, we may at once give up 
all moral training, and despair of the capabilities and destinies 
of the human race. 

But in the next place, we observe that the immorality 
charged upon the ancient Classics is not peculiar to them. It 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 31 

pervades to a greater or less extent every department of liter- 
ature, ancient and modern. The literature of every age and 
people lias always been more or less corrupt, and will continue 
to be so till that new cycle is performed which philanthropists 
look for, and which will evolve new elements and a new order 
of things in the history of human affairs. " Krras," says an 
ancient philosopher — " Erras, si existimas nostri saeculi esse 
vitiuni luxnriam et oegligentiam boni inoris, et alia quae objicit 
suis quisque temporibus. Hominura sunt ista non temporum : 
nulla aetas vaeavita culpa. Efcsi aestamarelieentianicuj usque, 
saeculi ineipias ; pudet dicere nunquam apertius quam coram 
(.'atone peccatum est/' The whole history of literature is a 
confirmation of these observations. The opposers of Classical 
learning would substitute the modern languages in place of 
the ancient : but their argument carried out would discard the 
former as well as the latter, and would doom all the glorious 
records which the human mind has left of itself on every age, 
to go down together into the same grave. They would rob 
every generation of the experience and wisdom of its prede- 
decessors ; and each for itself must begin and build anew. 

But how do we reason on this subject in educating our 
youth in the literature of the present age? Modern litera- 
ture is, at least, as open to the objection of immorality as the 
ancient. The ephemeral productions of the periodical press, 
tales, novels, romances, plays for scenic representation, and the 
whole bibliothecary of the " ten times repeated trash," which 
load the shelves of our circulating libraries, and like the frogs 
and locusts which came up over the land of Egypt, find their 
way into every family and exhale universal pestilence, — this 
is the popular literature of the present day ; and the best 



32 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

which can be said of' it is that under an elegant and alluring 
garb it addresses itself for the most part to weakness and 
folly, and often to the lowest sentiments and worst passions of 
human nature. 

" The flowers of eloquence profusely poured 
O'er spotted vice, fill half the lettered world."* 

Even " Standard Authors," as their publishers christen them, 
are tolerated in masking the deformity of vice; in dressing up 
her haggard ugliness, and in presenting her to the youthful 
mind in all the bright coloring of genius, in the charms of 
style, imagination, beautiful language and excited sentiment. 
The Muse of Byron, whose enchantment no sensitive mind 
can escape, figures alternately as a dark and moody misan- 
thrope and flippant blasphemer. Moore paints sensualism 
with a rainbow coloring and marries it to immortal verse. 
Bulwer, with a heaven-born genius that should soar like the 
eagle to its home, stoops to instruct men in the arts of 



"The " short course," as it is called, of modern education, has grown out of the 
vast multiplication of reading matter, which, at the present time, is increasing beyond 
all former example. The world is flooded with " new works," and the ambition of 
authorship as well as the cupidity of booksellers is exhausted in new-vamping up their 
old wares so as to attract the public eye. So various and immense are the literary 
labors of this age, that the art of writing books is perhaps less difficult than the art of 
choosing them. But every thing cannot be studied, or even read; and it cannot he for 
a moment doubted that what is very aptly termed light literature, has an immense 
advantage over the more useful and substantial works of standard writers It is in a 
more popular form ; it is cheaper in price ; it is infinitely more common, meeting the 
eye at every turn ; it costs no intellectual labor, while it sates the present appetency 
and olten passes with the vulgar for extensive erudition. It is therefore easy to ac- 
count for the glowing aversion to Classical studies, — a thing not less to he deprecated in 
itself than on account of its being an alarming indication of the state of the public 
mind. Its captivating and effeminate character is well set forth in the admonition of 
Grimseus: Ac dolet mini quidem deliciis literarum inescatos subito jam homines adeo 
esse, praesertim qui Christianos esse profitentur, ut legere nisi quod ad presentem gus- 
tum facit sustineant nihil: inde et disciplina et philosophia ipsa jam fere prorsus, 
etiam a doctis negligentur. * * * * Pertinax res barbaries est fateor; sed minus 
potest tanien quam ilia persuasa literarum prudentior si ratione caret sapientia' virtu- 
tisque specie misere lectores circiraiducens. — Preface u> Plato. 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 66 

seduction and highway robbery — to teach him who stabs hi> 
neighbor how to 

Stab liiin politely, and return tin* sword. 
Reeking into the sheath, with graceful aii , 

And even Shakspeare himself — who enshrined as much of the 

u divinity of genius" as ever was given to one man, — has im- 
mortalized indecency and played pander to the courtly dissi- 
pation and licentious manners of the age. 

To graver authors, the objection lies with no less force. 
Pope, ( ribbon, Hume, D'Alambert, Voltaire, Rousseau, Shafts- 
bury, Bolingbroke, and a host more, who, either openly or 
covertly, have attacked Christianity with diversified paradox, 
or subtle sophism, or pompous declamation, or ribald philoso- 
phy, are ranked among our literary masters. What then? 
Must we deny our youth all access to these renowned authors 
and exclude them from our libraries because they occasionally 
inculcate a loose or doubtful morality? Plato expelled all 
poets from his imaginary republic, because two lines were 
found in Homer's J Iliad which seemed to favor the doctrine 
of hereditary succession: and he would show equal reason 
who should banish from the republic of letters all these great 
masters of modern literature because they have sometimes 
shown an unsound faith, or perverted the noble faculties with 
which they were endowed ; or who should debar the student 
from the riches of Classical learning for the reason that it 
abounds with similar examples of unenlightened, or of per- 
verted genius. 

We would treat the young student in the one case precisely 
as in the other. We would uncover the whole perilous field be- 
fore him where, sooner or later, he must Mage a moral conflict ; 



34 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

a conflict which will try the soul; a conflict with Sophistry 
and Error and Vice and Folly and false Doctrine. But 
we would not have him enter that field unarmed. We would 
gird him with Truth, Conscience, Principle, Example, Admo- 
nition — a moral panoply of celestial temper, and then send 
him out to take the chances of the battle. The soldier who is 
disciplined in camps and conflicts, is he who faces the front of 
peril, and tramples on the neck of the foe. The mariner who 
is apprised of the dangers of the ocean, is he who will be best 
prepared to fight with its storm and its tempest, and to outride 
its elemental war. That is a false view of human nature 
which proposes to shut it out from moral evil by holding it 
in ignorance ; by fettering its active energy and its inquiring, 
free spirit. Virtue, to be firm and enduring, must be reared 
amidst difficulty, trial, temptation, discipline ; and we hold 
that theory of education to be radically defective which would 
exclude all the learning of antiquity, or the learning of any 
age or nation on account of its objectionable morality, instead 
of pointing out its dangers and providing for them.* 



■in confirmation of the view here taken, I cannot omit quoting a most beautiful and 
powerful passage from Milton, whom .Sir William Jones pionounced to be the most per- 
fect scholar England had ever produced. •' Laudatus a laudato viroS ' 

" He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, 
and yet distinguish, and yet abstain, and prefer that which is truly better, he is the 
true way-faring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue that never 
sallies out and sees her adversary. That which is a youngling in contemplation of evil 
and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers and rejects it, is a blank 
virtue— not a pure. Since therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice in this world is 
so necessary to the constitution of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the con- 
firmation of truth, how cm we more s.'.fely scout into the regions of sin and falsity 
than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason. " :: * * 
Why should we then affect a rigor contrary to the manner of God and of nature, by 
abridging or scanting those means which books, freely permitted, are both to the trial 
of virtue and the exercise of truth ? * * * Were I the chooser, a dram of well- 
doing should be preferred to twenty times as much forcible hindrance of evil-doing. 
For God surelj esteems the growth and completion of one virtuous person, more than 
the restraint of ten vicious." — Speech/or the liberty of printing. 



A.DDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 35 

But what is the precise scop;* of the objection ? There arc 
many departments of liberal Learning, which, from their very 
nature, stand almost entirely disconnected with either morals 
or manners ; efforts of pure intellect, which neither reflect the 
social state of society nor the moral features of the age. Let 
such portions of Classical literature be stripped of the fabulous 
mythology in which their authors occasionally indulged, not 
so much a matter of belief as a literary embellishment, and 
an accommodation to the popular tastes and traditions, and we 
presume no scholar will contend that their moral tendencies 
are not as pure and as elevated as those of the corresponding 
branches of polite learning in any nation or age. And what 
shall we say of those who were moral teachers by profession '! 
What of the practical morality of the ancient Glassies as it 
was inculcated by such masters as Pliny the younger, Cicero, 
Seneca, Isocrates, Plato, Epictetus? Judiciously inculcated 
and pruned of the redundancies of a mind divinely imagina- 
tive, as well as acutely philosophical, we know no system of 
ethics, always excepting that of Christianity, so well adapted 
to the formation of the moral character, as the sublime phi- 
losophy of Plato. What ennobling and inspiriting views 
he give of the capabilities and destinies of human nature! 
TIow highly does he teach us to venerate itsspiritual part, and 
to fit it for a future and a better state ! With what philo- 
sophic firmness does he teach us to subdue evil passions and 
to train the body into its office as a servant and minister to 
the soul! How affectionately does he discourse of death, im- 
mortality, and the glorified state of the departed just, often 
I— srting that the whole business of life is to learn to die, and 
that philosophy itself is but a preparation for death ' Let 



36 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

him who decries what he contemptuously styles " Pagan 
Philosophy/' as if to allow any gift of light to natural reason 
were to sully the divine glories of Christianity, study care- 
fully the Phaedon of Plato. Let him ponder well the dis- 
course which the admiring disciple puts into the mouth of 
Socrates before his taking of the poison ; and he will rise from 
the perusal, a better man ; — better qualified for his duties, and 
for that immortality which the philosopher so ardently labors 
to establish. 

The objection lies mainly, then, to the poetry of the ancient 
Classics, and here particularly to the fabulous mythology on 
which Classic poetry is built. This system, with all its fan- 
ciful creations, its orders of gods and goddesses, which are 
generally supposed to have been worshipped as bona fide dei- 
ties by idolatrous antiquity, is looked upon as a most disgust- 
ing and horrible element of Classic literature ; and as it per- 
vades to a greater or less extent every species of ancient poetry 
is thought sufficient to condemn the whole to reprobation and 
oblivion. 

We observe, first, upon this argument, that it lies more in 
theory than in practice. There is no reason to suppose that 
the student of ancient poetry contemplates its mythology in 
any other light than as an ingenious and fabulous system, 
which, however effectually it might have addressed itself 
to the ardent and imaginative genius of the early ages, 
has long since exploded and vanished into thin air, before 
the power of Christianity and the light of reason and 
knowledge. 

It certainly will not be seriously contended that he will be 
seduced by the example of the ancients into idol worship, or a 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 37 

belief in the degrading doctrines of polytheism. He knows 

that the orators, historians and philosophers, treated the 
popular superstitions with the utmost contempt ; and thai 
even the poets themselves often held them up to ridicule and 
scorn. With these views, he either neglects the whole system. 
or studies it simply in its connection with the philosophy of 
the human mind, or as an interesting portion of literary 
history. 

But, secondly, we observe that the popular impression on 
this subject is erroneous. Few have studied the system either 
in its influence or origin ; yet many pronounce upon it boldly 
and indignantly without knowing what they say, nor whereof 
they affirm. Yet this same Pagan Mythology, which is gen- 
erally taken for an epitome of all in human nature that is 
absurd and revolting — this frightful monster, this horrible 
and incomprehensible " Demogorgon" looming up out of an- 
cient time, had a natural, shall we say, — a necessary origin in 
the simplest principles and the warmest impulses and affec- 
tions of our common nature. 

Man, in the early ages, was a creature of feeling, imagina- 
tion, passion : and Greece, "the land of his sweet and early 
prime," where nature was a mirror of Paradise, and had spread 
out all her varieties of the grand, and the beautiful, and the 
fair, — where "the very air was music, and light Mas like the 
colorings of love," — Greece, with her soft climate and sunny 
skies, with her mountains and rivers and green vales, with her 
beautifully indented coast everywhere penetrated by that placid 
and lake-like sea, this was the country where all that was 
warm, and grand, and high, in feeling and genius sprung at 
once into perfection, i he early Greek felt all these influences, 



38 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

which touched him as with the finger of the Divinity, and 
harmonized his spirit to the beauties of the visible world. 
So intense was their action upon his ardent and imaginative 
nature — so much had they to do in determining his condition 
and happiness, that he could hardly fail to conceive of them 
as emblems of the Divinity ; or as supernatural agents acting 
either for good or for evil in the common concerns of hu- 
manity. But these agents were spiritual, intangible, evanes- 
cent. He therefore sought to invest them with some visible, 
material form : something on which the mind might retain a 
hold ; and which should render the communion of the spirit 
with nature both more perfect and permanent. Invention 
lent her aid ; and the spiritual conception found a material re- 
presentation in effigies of clay, or wood, or the rude stone. 
But even these were imperfect, and gross, and scarcely ap- 
proaching the long-cherished archetypes of the Ideal, the 
Beautiful, the Immortal. Genius and skill were added ; 
then the altar smoked, and the column rose ; the canvas 
glowed with art ; and even the cold marble was wakened into 
life and " bid to breathe eternity of love." Hence originated 
pictorial and sculptural design : and in this sense, it is fact, 
and not Classic fable merely, that the fine arts are the daugh- 
ters of Love. Among the early Greeks, these forms were 
merely " simulacra Deorum" emblems of divine agency ; and 
can be considered as nothing less than the offspring of a senti- 
ment of natural piety. The sentiment itself was good ; and 
contributed, no doubt, in the absence of divine revelation, to 
strengthen the moral faculty and the sense of dependence 
upon Providence. But the multitude of these ages gradually 
lost the end in the means ; and having their understanding 



AJXDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY 39 

darkened, " worshipped and served the creature more than 
the Creator." 51 

Such is the foundation of the (lassie mythology. It took 
its origin from the simplest and besl feelings, as well as the 
highest aspirations and noblest faculties of human nature. 
The spirit of man, longing for the To Kalon, — the higher 
and more perfect Beauty, which seemed but dimly represented 
and shadowed forth in the loveliness of the material world, 
sought, first, mr some impersonation of human affections, or 
of the power and excellence of the Divinity. Then, it 
peopled the earth, the air, the waters, with supernatural agents, 
whether beneficent or malign : gave to every wood a Nymph ; 
m every fount a Naiad : next, it breathed immortal in the 
creations of nature and art — 

'• The half-wakened sleepers of marble, the statues of gods ami the t, r od-like;" 

and, finally, — its great crowning work, — it gave to Greece a 
literature, copious, graceful, original ; wonderfully exuberant 
both in language and materals : now reflecting from its beau- 
tiful and transparent depths, all the loveliness of the visible 



"Plutarch expressly disclaims idol-worship, and gives us the enlightened sense of all 
antiquity on the subject of the fabulous mythology : 

"Philosophers," he says, " honor the representation of the Deity everywhere, even 
in inanimate beings ; consequently more in those thai have life. We are therefore to 
approve, not the worship of those animals, but those who by Hie ir means ascend to the 
Deity. They are he considered as so many mirrors which nature holds forth, in which 
the Supreme Being always displays himself in a wonderful manner, or a- instruments 
which he makes use of to manifest outwardly his incomprehensible wisdom." — Jsis 
and Osiris. 

To the same effect we might adduce passages from Homer, Hesiod, Lucretius, Ovid, 
] [orace, Statins, and Lucian The latter poet gives the sentiment of all : 
•• Qui finxit sacros auro vel mariuori vultus 
Non facit ille Deis." 

Pliny, the younger, in a letter to a young friend going into Achaia, writes thus: 

' Revere the gods— the f iders of the free states of (-Jreece— the sacred influences which 

thost gods represent, the ancient glory of Greece, and that very old age, which in man is 
venerabh — in cities, sacred." 



40 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

world ; and now revealing with equal fidelity and distinctness 
whatever is great and excellent in the mind of man ; — its 
mysterious workings, — its divine aspirations and imaginings 
—its 

'• Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears;" 

— a Literature that has stood both the model and the material 
for that of all after time ; — which succeeding ages, not dream- 
ing to excel, have thought it sufficient glory to emulate and 
praise. 

We come now to consider the Second objection — which is, 
that Classical Learning is not practical. The spirit of the 
age, it is said, is practical. Talents must now be turned to 
account. Education must now become useful ; audit is folly 
to spend years in treasuring up a useless mass of dead learn- 
ing which has no direct bearing upon the concerns and 
business of life. 

The objection assumes that nothing is practical which 
cannot be turned to purposes of immediate utility; and of all 
the loose and dangerous doctrines of an age fruitful in ab- 
surdity, we hold this to be one of the most pernicious and 
alarming. It marks a rapid degeneration of public taste ; 
the prevalence of a gross and sordid spirit ; and though pro- 
fessing to adapt education to the necessities of the times, it is 
really the index of a state of public sentiment every way 
unfavorable to the cultivation of liberal learning. It' those 
who imagine themselves to be the exclusively practical men, 
admit any utility in knowledge apart from its physical 
results, they are asked to consider that all knowledge is con- 
neeted: that whenever a new idea or principle is acquired, it 
does not stand in the mind isolated and independent, but 
amalgamates with all previously acquired knowledge, and 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. II 

multiplies itself indefinitely. Painting and Music may fur- 
nish an illustrative analogy. He who has reflected upon the 
interna] process, while looking at a splendid picture, or listen- 
ing to a line strain of music, has found that it is not the mere 
disposition of light and shade, or the simple melody and con- 
cord of sweet sounds which chiefly pleases him. The effect is 
rather that of resemblance and association ; which bring up 
before his imagination the pleasant landscapes, the beauties of 
nature and art, the scenes of our early days ; our own long- 
lost feelings, and glimpses of all beautiful prospects in the 
universe of matter and of mind. Thus it is with the subjects 
of intellection. All the branches of Literature and Science 
are mutually dependent and associated ; — a connection beauti- 
fully expressed by an old poet : — 

" o, Messed letters that combine in one 

All ages past, and make one live with all : 
By you do weconfer with all who are gone, 

And the dead living unto council call : 
By yon the unborn shall have communion 

With what we feci, and what doth us befall." 

There is philosophy as well as poetry in this view. 'The 
connecting principle of which we speak is Truth, 

" Which tills, which hounds, connects and equals all." 

Truth, which, however its votaries <>r their systems may 
change, or however party-colored it may appear as descried by 
our naturally infirm and filmy vision, is itself one indissoluble 
and eternal : — the essence of all good whether in intellect or 
morals.* 



What is philosophy but the development of Truth in the numberless relations of 
cause and effect ? What is history hut the Truth of man's social condition and progress, 
recorded for the generations to come? What is poetry, even in its most rapt and wild 
imaginings, but the faithful and true expression of the world without or tin- world 
within .' lu painting and sculpture, what is the rule of beauty hut Truth .'—Truth in 
form, teat ure, attitude, and expression, and even in those exquisite tone lies of genius— 
those combinations of ideal perfection, in which Art is said to excel Nature, and to 



42 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELL.S. 

This is the view which was taken by Burke and Sir Francis 
Bacon. It was apprehended even by Cicero ; and though he 
applied it only to the sciences, he might have extended it to 
all the subjects of literature and art, and to the whole circle of 
human knowledge. 

But what has this view to do with Classical Learnino; ? 
Much every way. We have set forth a, universal, vital rela- 
tion throughout the whole economy of mind. We have seen 
that all learning is useful and practical as discovering Truth : 
that in the language of that great practical statesman Ed- 
mund Burke, " there is no knowledge which is not valuable :" 
that as the bee flits over field and forest, and extracts honey 
from every flower which opens its petals to the sun, so genius 
wings the universe of thought, and gathers its aliment from 
universal mind, — the wealth of intellect and literature in all 
ages and nations. 

It may be observed on the subject of practical knowledge 
that many species of learning which often seem least appli- 
cable to practice, are conducive, physically and palpably, to 
purposes of utility. Theory must ever precede practice. 

transcend her own tnodel ? What, too, are fiction and the drama but strong and vivid 
portraitures of Truth as exhibited in the ever-varying aspects of humanity and colli- 
sions of man with man? Nay ; what is religion itself, but a pure, practical faith in the 
Truth of man's moral nature? How obvious it is that in all the branches of human 
science, there is a principle of consanguinity ; and that in whatever direction we 
prosecute our inquiries, with a sincere and enlightened love of truth, our labors cannot 
be useless. The language of Cicero on this subject is express and beautiful: " Etenim 
omnes artes quae ad humanitatu tarn pertinent habent quoddain commune vinculum, 
et quasi cognatione quadani inter se coutinentur." — Oratiopro Arch. 

To the same effect are the words of Thomas Fuller — a sterling writer of the seven- 
teenth century, who applies the observation directly to the study of the Classics : 
"Uoweverwemustknowtlr.it all learning which is hut one grand science, hath so 
homogeneal a body, that the parts thereof do with a mutual service, relate to and com- 
municate strength and lustre to each other. * ••• ■'■'■ On the credit of the Latin 
tongue, we may trade in discourse all over Christendom ; but the Greek, though not 
so generally spoken, is known with unless profit and more pleasure." — Fuller' s Holy 

Stat,: 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 13 

Principles must be ascertained before they can be practically 

applied. This is manifest from the whole history of society, 
as well as from the reason itself of the thing. What are all 
the improvements and inventions of modern times of which 
we boast so much, and which we arrogantly set down to the 
credit of this practical age, but the results of study and 
philosophy carried out into useful operation and brought to 
bear upon the necessities and wants of men ? Xor is it the 
immediate result to which we are to look as the measure of 
utility. Years — ages may elapse before an invention in art, 
or a discovery in science can be turned to any practical ac- 
count ; and yet we may he certain that whenever we are put 
in possession of a new principle, that principle will aid in the 
investigation of others, and be brought in some way and at 
some period to subserve useful and important purposes. 
About six hundred years before the Christian era, Thales of 
Miletus, Pythagoras and others ascertained certain truths 
relative to space and quantity. More than three hundred 
years afterwards, Euclid collected these propositions, added 
others, and arranged and digested the whole into a science 
How long was it before this science was pressed into the 
service of Natural Philosophy, and brought to demonstrate 
the laws of pressure, attraction, revolution, and the various 
branches of practical mechanics? How long may the chemist 
question the elements by acid and crucible before he can 
elaborate a single medicative compound, or detect a single 
property or principle which he can subserve to the healing- 
art '! But there is no necessity to multiply examples. The 
whole history of mechanical invention and of the useful arts 
demonstrates the fallacy of the popular notion that no 



44 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

knowledge Is practicable which is not of direct and palpable 
utility.* 

" But surely Classical Learning lias never been applied 
either more or less directly to these purposes. It has never 
abridged human labor, or facilitated commerce, or aided the 
useful arts, or even furnished the science of these great means 
for the promoting of human happiness." 

True, Classical Learning has not done much for the useful 
arts, nor has it consulted, directly, the outward and physical 
condition of man. But what if it have done infinitely more 
than this ! What if, in discarding mere matters of physical 
convenience, or rather, in leaving them to be supplied by 
other agents, it have performed a higher office and acted 
directly upon the intelligent and moral nature of man? What 
if it have enlarged and enlightened the soul, and invigorated 
the understanding, and stored the mind with imperishable 
wealth, — the riches of thought and knowledge? Is there 
nothing practical or useful in all this ? Or must we degrade 
our nature by the admission that its highest well-being consists 
in the satisfaction of its bodily wants and in its sensual grati- 
fications ?f 



*It is not common even to the reflective part of mankind to consider how much of 
what is called practical knowledge, depends either directly upon abstruse science, or 
indirectly upon those habits of miud which are induced by liberal and laborious 
studies. Physical improvements are obvious and stand out to the eye ; while the moral 
causes which produced them often lie unheeded in the back-ground; in the solitary 
speculations of the closet, or the dry pages of philosophy. " Plato," says Avistocles, 
"if any man ever did, philosophised acutely and perfectly; and lie held that the 
knowledge of abstract truth must precede the knowledge of human tilings." And 
isit not worthy of being observed, that in all ages, those whose labors have been most 
practically useful to society — who have blessed it witli wise laws, and good institu- 
tions, who have founded states and conducted them to prosperity and honor, have been 
those who were most acute in abstract speculations. 

■{-How narrow and fallacious is this popular idea of utility which assigns the lirst 
place to the mechanical operators, and ranks the intellectual and reflective part of 
mankind as mere drones in the hive, subsisting on the labors of the industrious and 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 15 

Hie true doctrine on this subjed must be clear. Thai art 
or thai branch of learning is most practical, which, whether 
proximately, <>r remotely, compasses the greatest amount of 
human happiness: and, as intellectual is infinitely superior to 
men' animal pleasure, the man who has revealed one new and 
sublime truth, or obtained the mastery over a single bad pas- 
sion, or taken a single step in the advancement pf his rational 
nature, has wrought out more of absolute utility, than if lie 
had constructed a machine which should traverse sea and land 
on the wings of the wind, or pour out wealth like a flood into 
the lap of the nation. 



tlic useful. According t<> this view, a Newton, investigating tin- law of gravity and 
exploring the mechanism of the heavens was an idle theorist : while the operator who 
got out the brass and the wood for his telescopes, or the vagrant huckster who supplied 
the philosopher's closel with a corn-broom, was infinitely the more practical man of the 
two. Scaliger defends the metaphysical subtleties of the schoolmen from the charge of 
inutility, on the ground of their being a salutary discipline of the mind; and satirically 
Observes that though tney were not very useful in constructing machines for grinding 
corn, they were nevertheless instrumental in clearing the mind from the rust of igno- 
rance and unskilful ness and making it acute for other things. " Uaruni indagatio Bub- 
tilitatum, el si non est utilis ad machinas farinarias conflciendas exuil animum tamen 
inscitiee rubigine, acuitque ad alia." The observation is very just : hut how much 
more applicable to the Classics than tin; misty metaphysics of the sixteenth century ! 
And bow wide is the view of the great Ttalian scholar from the meagre utilitarianism of 
the presenl day ! " Even the professional man," says OUT practical educator, " will not 
have occasion for the use of Classical Learning perhaps twenty times in the whole 
course of his life.'' This may he, or it may not he. There is not a subject in the whole 
range of Morals, Politics, Literature or Philosophy, in the treatment of which he may 
not draw copiously upon the ancients, either for argument, embellishment, illustration 
or authority ; how often he will resort to them for these purposes, will depend upon his 
taste, his education, and that sort of capacity which can transmute all kinds of knowl- 
edge into the means and instruments of its capital ends. But we may ask how many 
branches of knowledge does he pursue with the expectation of turning them to direct 
account in his profession or in the conduct of life? Is it for this purpose that he 
studies Mathematics, or Metaphysics, or Chemistry, or Natural Philosophy? Will he 

bring his diagrams into the Senate, or spread oul his algebra to a jury, or discourse 
Metaphysics from the pulpit, or Natural Science at the bed-side of the sick '.' It is not 
manifest thai the whole philosophy and plan of education proceeds upon the principle 
that the great object to lie attained is not the mere cumulation of knowledge to he 
drawn out for use as the occasion calls for in after life, — hut to " sharpen the mind for 
other things ;" — to form it to certain tastes and habits which will enable it to act on all 
subjects with thai precision and effective energy which always mark a cultivated un- 
derstanding .' 



46 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

But with this higher order of utility, the calculating, lucre- 
loving spirit of this age has nothing to do. It is yet clam- 
orous for practical knowledge ; and by practical knowledge, it 
means that which consults the lowest part of human nature: — 
which can be forced into some elaborate scheme for the econo- 
mizing of physical power, or for administering to the animal 
appetites and passions : not considering that the spiritual part 
of man is better than the physical, and that whatever weans 
the mind from matter and from sense, and attaches it to uni- 
versal Truth, and to that perfect and transcendant goodness 
which is its offspring, is practical in the highest and best 
sense of the term. 

The Third objection which we were to notice is, that Clas- 
sical Learning is Un-American; and that it belongs to us to 
" redeem education from the thraldom of European theories 
and European authority." " Let us learn," — we quote the 
words of the argument — " that Education with us, like 
society, government, religion, must be essentially American and 
not European : that it must partake deeply and extensively of 
the vital spirit of American institutions : that it must, in 
order to ensure its durability and usefulness, be adapted to 
our state of society, forms of government and modes of reli- 
gion : and that this conformity can never be discovered, 
much less preserved by any imitation of European plans. 7 '* 
And what then ? Are we to discard a branch of education 
from our schools because it can be applied equally well to the 
schools of other countries ? Is this the meagre and exclusive 
system of education to which we are commended • — and is this 
the philanthropic and liberal spirit which we are to inculcate 

'See Grimke on Science and Literature, Preface p. 5. 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI CTNIVERSITY. 17 

upon American youth? [f the argument be well grounded, 
what branch of science or of liberal learning is there which it. 
will not sweep away? Who will contend that Painting and 
Music, that Sculpture and Architecture are peculiarly Ameri- 
can? And are we therefore to shut our eyes upon all those 
beautiful and grand creations — productions of the finest 
minds — those master-pieces of genius, imagination and taste 
which have survived the lapse of ages and the decay of em- 
pires, for the reason that they are not the product of Ameri- 
can soil, or peculiar to American institutions? Again, what 
is there in the studies of natural science peculiar to ourselves? 
Are not chemical affinities and proportions, the principles of 
mechanics, and the laws of matter, the same over the world, 
and as properly a part of education in Turkey or Russia as in 
Republican America ? And what if, on this account, we 
should be asked to turn our backs upon those vast treasures of 
wisdom and knowledge which have been unlocked by science 
and philosophy; — to shut and seal up the great volume of 
Nature, whose pages have been opened by the hands of such 
as Bacon and Wollaston, and Davy and Buffon and Cuvier? 
Tt form- then no solid argument against the ancient Classics 
as a part of education, that it is not American : — that it is as 
well adapted to foreign and despotic institutions as to our own. 
Xot American! So neither is the light of heaven; or the 
common air; or the rain, or the sunshine, which carpet our 
fields with verdure, and cause our hills and valleys to smile 
and rejoice ; and why is it not as reasonable to undervalue 
these common blessings of a beneficent Providence because 
they are not exclusively ours, as those nobler endowments of 
the soul, — reason, Imagination, language — the common birth- 
right and inheritance of man? 



48 MEMORIAL OF -SAMUEL EELLS. 

We would not be supposed to believe that the reformers 
would reform a way all these essential elements in our systems 
of public education. Yet consistency would require nothing 
less than this ; and we have endeavored to show the fallacy of 
the argument by following it out into its legitimate results : 
and by showing that its tendency is to illiberalize the mind 
and to throw the world back at once upon primeval darkness 
and barbarism. 

The true doctrine on this subject appears to be, that 
wherever there is a noble exertion of human intellect — 
wherever mind has left a monument of itself, whether in art, 
letters or science; wherever, in short, there has been a triumph 
of the spiritual over the physical, it is to be set at its own 
intrinsic value, without regard to age, language, creed, or 
clime. What has the intellectualist or the educator to do 
with those conventional divisions, those strips of land or 
water, or those diversities of dialect or custom, which divide 
the world, and split up the great brotherhood into clans and 
factions ? It is his to range the wide universe ; and all na- 
tions and ages lie in his field of view. From all he gathers 
instruction, with all, he claims sympathy and communion. 
He reveres Mind — universal mind ; without stopping to in- 
quire whether it has flashed through the familiar drapery of 
his own language, or upon what age it has shed its divine 
illuminations. 

Nearly allied to this is the Fourth objection : That Classical 
Learning, with all the labor and care with which it must be 
maintained, has done, and can do little or nothing for the 
interests of the people. " What," it has been triumphantly 
asked, " What is the value of human learning; if it do not 



ADDRES9 AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY 

bless as well as adorn society — if it enlighten its professors 
onlyyand not the people? I> it only ;i matter of speculation 
for the intellectual powers of man. or of entertainment for 
his taste? ('an its sublimity and beauty be just object- of 
admiration, unless it improve the condition of tin 1 ignorant 
and oppressed, while it enlightens and corrects, refines and 
elevates those on whom the future progress and character of 
society depend ? No. The true glory and excellence of 
science consists in its aptitude to meliorate' the condition of 
man, and to promote substantial practical improvement in the 
education and government of the people. 1 ' Again : " It/' 
that is American education, "ought to be eminently adapted 
to our development and progress, to the improvement and 
preservation of our institutions — in a word, to the great truth 
— the people govern. Our schools are for the education of the 
people ; our colleges are for the education of the public ser- 
vants and professional agents of that people. But all have 
one end — one object, the good of the people. The youth in 
our colleges should be educated on this great principle, that 
the religious and political departments are everything, the 
Classics and mathematics comparatively — nothing"* 

In these views, which contain much of both truth and soph- 
istry, we have the great popular argument against the study of 
tlie Classics. Passing over its ad captandum character, let us 



*See Grimke's Address before the Literary and Philosophical Society of South Caro- 
lina, p.8— also Grirake on Science and Kd neat ion — Preface. 

It i- to !"• observed thai the opposition to the Classics was followed up almost simul- 
taneously and with equal vigor by an attack upon the Mathematics. This is precisely 
what might have been expected; tor their claims and character are very similar. In 
fact they are biethren. They have grown up side bj side, and if one is to lie I anished , 
it i- rit and proper thai the other should he the companion o* its exile. They were 
lovely and pleasanl in their lives, and in their death they ought nol to he divided. 

f 



50 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

examine the foundation on which it is built. If it be intended 
by the argument that Classical Learning is not accessible to 
the majority of the people, we cheerfully concede the fact, 
together with every consequence which properly flows from it. 
But in the same sense, we may say with equal truth that phi- 
losophy, that the fine arts, that the various branches of natural 
science are not useful to the people. To make all men good 
Classical scholars would be as impracticable as to make them 
all sculptors, or poets, or artisans. The division of labor is 
as necessary in the pursuits of intellect and education as in 
those of commerce and agriculture ; and the number of those 
avIio devote themselves to literature and science must of neces- 
sity be small in comparison with the multitudes who must be 
engaged in the common occupations and the useful arts of life. 
Accordingly, the few have in every age been made the deposi- 
taries of knowledge ; while the practical benefits of their 
laborious studies have accrued to the many. What would 
have been the condition of the people at this moment, had it 
not been for the labors of such as Gallileo, Hervey, Davy, 
and Bacon — men avIio have been set apart, as the ancient 
Levites were set apart for the sacred office, to become the 
priests and interpreters of nature ; to subject her mighty but 
invisible agents to human control and to all the purposes of 
common life? Our universities and colleges are, emphati- 
cally, the institutions of the people : established and endowed 
for them ; and it is for their benefit that all their great and 
legitimate objects should be fully carried out. They are the 
conservatories of the people's literature ; the seminaries of the 
popular mind. There is not an individual of the people, not 
the meanest, but has an interest in the prosperity of that 



A.DDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 51 

literature ; in its large and vigorous spirit, in its disciplinary 
and humanizing influence upon national character and man- 
ners : in the means which it provides for the training of the 
intellect of the rising generation ; and in the rich and glorious 
prospects which it spreads out for the generations to come. 
The Classic wealth, too, which belongs to that literature, and 
which it has inherited from ancient times, with all its rich and 
eloquent thought, with its chaste and beautiful models of line 
writing, with its severe taste, with its philosophic and political 
wisdom, its sateless and upward spirit, its rejoicing sympathy 
with all that is grand and fair in art or in nature, all this is 
fcheir'salso : not indeed in their heads, hut in their hands, and 
under their direction. We therefore say truly, that our 
colleges and universities are the institutions of the people ; 
that their professors are the agents of the people ; to preserve 
for them and for their children, the seeds of science, and to 
perpetuate those pursuits of liberal learning, which they 
cannot aid in their individual capacity, and by their own 
personal service. 

If Classical Learning can be discarded here, how, we ask, 
is it to survive to any useful purpose, — how, indeed, to be 
preserved from final and entire extinction ? We are aware 
that the reformers provide it a refuge from this fate, by com- 
mitting it to such private citizens as have time and fortune 
which they can expend in nothing else. Strange inconsist- 
ency ! They vilify and abuse it, degrade it into utter worth- 
lessness, proclaim it an outlaw from a system of liberal 
instruction, with due form and solemnity, and then by way of 
semi-atonement for this Vandalism, commit it to the taste and 
Leisure of certain private country gentlemen, to whom they 



OZ MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

give it in pious charge to remember its virtues : that, like 
Othello, it— 

" lias done the .state some service,'' 

and it grieves them sorely to see it utterly exterminated : — 
much like the French tyrant in the revolution, who always 
smiled at the fate of his victim, and recommended the wretch 
to mercy in the very breath that sentenced his head to the 
block. 

But we go a step further, and say that the American 
people are directly, peculiarly interested in the preservation of 
Classical Learning in our public institutions. Ours is 
emphatically a free people : and the whole of ancient litera- 
ture is inspired — instinct with the very fire and spirit of 
liberty. We do not go to the literature of hoary and tottering 
despotisms to teach our youth the art of tyrannizing over 
subject and suffering humanity, or to catch the cringing, servile 
spirit of unconditional submission. We go to the literature 
of a people who inhaled the first breath of freedom ; with 
whom every barren rock and every green valley was thought 
worthy to be redeemed by blood ; a people to whom the love 
of country was dearer than the love of life ; and who have 
left the memorials of that love upon a thousand battle-fields, 
where foe grappled fast with foe, and where the firm and 
unfaltering resolve was — to conquer, or to die. " The country 
of Greece ! what is it," asks Coleridge in the genuine spirit 
of a scholar, " what is it but the country of the Heroes, from 
Codrus to Philopcemen ? — and so it would be though all the 
sands of Africa should cover her corn-fields and olive-gardens, 
and not a flower were left on Hvmettus for a bee to murmur 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 

The theories of popular government in Greece and Rome 
were indeed defective. They were struck out with do model ; 
and unaided by any practical lessons of political experience, 
fchey proved insufficient to control the fierce and strong 
passions of the age. But the spirit in which they were con- 
ceived, was worthy of the freedom which they were intended 
to preserve. It was genuine republicanism ; and the poetry, 
history, eloquence and philosophy of the Greeks and Romans 
were all rife with the republican spirit. Never was there a 
more generous and unbounded admiration paid to the talents 
and services of public men. The popular orators were 
greeted with acclamation when they entered the assemblies of 
the people; deeds of valor were immortalized in song: those 
who returned successful from battle were committed to canvas 
and marble; and all who deserved well of their country, 
whether in the senate or in the Held, were thought worthy of 
a place among the gods. This sentiment of country more- 
over, was a universal and popular sentiment, h was as deep 
and as strong in the hardy peasant who tilled the barren 
fields of Attica, as in the acute and polished Athenian who 
deliberated in the public assemblies, or gathered wisdom from 
the lips of sages in the Porch of the Academy. The charge 
of the Spartan mother to her son as she buckled on hi? armor 
and sent him out to the field of glory, to "come back with 
it, or on it ; " was but the expression of a strong national feeling 
which pervaded all Greece from the Mediterranean to the 
mountains. 

Our own political institutions are intimately related to those 
of republican antiquity. Their genius is the same. Their 
objects are the same. All the great principles on which they 



54 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

proceed are the same : and unless we take lessons from their 
experience, — drawing thence, as Livy admonishes us, both 
what we should imitate, and what we should avoid, — their 
corruption and fate will be the same. Our Federal Consti- 
tution ! that Constitution in which the genius of the nation 
lives and moves and has its being — under whose benignant 
care we have spread out into a great and strong nation ; which 
is enriching us with the art and opulence of every quarter of 
the globe : — which is developing our character and resources 
with such amazing rapidity : — which is blessing us with all 
the institutions of social and civilized and Christian life, and 
which holds out the same rich inheritance to children and to 
children's children through all coming time; what is that 
Constitution but the collected and applied wisdom of the 
past/? — the result of a succession of experiments upon that 
theory of popular government which had its origin in the 
states of Greece ; and which, having been repeated with foul 
disaster from age to age, has been finally purged of its corrup- 
tions, and is now to be tried over, once for all, here in the 
New World? Let our youth apply themselves to the 
study of that Constitution — not in its letter only, but in its 
spirit and principles, in their practical bearings, and their 
applicability to new and untried states of society. Let them 
be taught to reverse those examples of heroic and stern patri- 
otism which Classic literature has embalmed on its glowing 
and immortal pages, and, with a large view of human interests, 
to trace back our own freedom — that freedom for which our 
fathers bled at Bunker Hill, at Brandywine, and at Yorktown, 
and to connect and identify it with the same which was fought 
for by the heroes of Classic story ; by these who fell at 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 

Tanegra and Artemisium, at Marathon and Thermopylae. Our 
political theory we have derived from republican antiquity. 
Our liberty is but the resuscitation of her liberty. Our 
system is her system pruned of its tendencies to excess, rectified 
by practical reason, and sobered by time and experience. The 
framers of the Federal Constitution made themselves familiar 
with that system in its genius and practical operations. Its 
free spirit, — the vital principle, — they drank at the fountain. 
They questioned in their own language the chroniclers of thai 
distant age. They were about laying the foundations of a 
mighty empire, and on this new and great work they sought 
the light of example, and consulted as an oracle the experience 
of the past. They traveled hack over the waste of ages, and 
stood before the temple of liberty as it was built by the early 
men. They studied well that ancient structure, as n rose 
from the hands of the architects, all beautiful in its propor- 
tions, and resplendent in the soft light of a Grecian heaven. 
They saw it. too, leaning and tottering on its base; and they 
flew t<> tlie tumbliug ruins, and snatched thence column, and 
shaft, and capital, and with these trophies of its departed 
glory, and by the light of its funeral flames which blazed to 
the skies, they reared in the New World a fabric whose top 
should reach to heaven, and under whose shadow the nations 
should come and repose. 

Could the minds of American youth be thoroughly imbued 
with the spirit of' Classic Literature, it might furnish an anti- 
dote to many of our political sins. Demosthenes, on one 
occasion, told the Athenians, that they were more ready to 
praisi than to imitate the virtues of their ancestors. Musi we 
not apply to ourselves the reproach of the ancient orator? 



56 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

Who has not marked the wide difference between our prin- 
ciples and our practice ; and our rapid degeneration from the 
standard of revolutionary patriotism ? Who lias not lamented 
the influence of sectional attachments and jealousies, — the 
universal, grasping ambition for power and place — the hot 
and angry spirit of partisan warfare ; and even the greatness 
itself of the country, which weakens the patriotic sentiment 
by stretching it over a compass too large for its loving and 
warm embrace? But from the action of all these causes upon 
the youthful mind — so unfavorable to the development of a 
patriotic and manly character — cramping the national feelings, 
— enfeebling the attachment to the great principles of consti- 
tutional liberty, or begetting at best, but a calculating and 
laggard patriotism, — he turns to commune with a people 
with whom the sentiment of country was everything; that 
of the individual, — nothing : with whom every child was 
taught to consider himself the property of the state : with 
whom tortures and death were held but a cheap price for the 
smallest gain to liberty or to national glory. By the chroni- 
clers of classic story he holds communion with all that is 
great and venerable in the past. He catches the " dying 
glory" which " smiles o'er the far times." The master spirits 
of the ancient world — the august company of sages, and 
orators, and statesmen, and patriots, and patriot-heroes, rise 
and crowd upon his vision, and, as they pass before him, he 
questions them of their governments, of their liberty, of the 
history of its corruption and decline, and converses with them, 
man to man, in the " kingly language of the mighty dead." 
Their own inspiration is breathed into his soul. It purges the 
intellectual eye. Ft renews the spirit. While he is musing, 



A.DDRESS A.T MIAMI [JNIVERSITY. 07 

the fire burns: and from (his polished and eloquent literature 
— a literature replete with practical and political wisdom, and 
rich in the lessons of a sublime patriotism, — he turns to the 
principles of his own constitution and governmenl with the 
intelligence which understands them, and the patriotism which 
will defend them.* 

The Fifth objection which we were to notice, is based upon 
a comparative estimate of the ancient and modern Classics; in 
which it is insisted that the former as being inferior to the 
latter, should be discarded, and the modern languages be sub- 
stituted in their place. Upon this argument we observe first, 
that the modern authors generally referred to in its support, 
were all line classical scholars, and derived their excellence 
mainly from the ancient sources. We suppose that no fact in 
literary history is more notorious, than that the 1 standard 
authors of English literature, those who have; done most to 
give it copiousness and stability, and to fix the principles of 
taste and criticism, were versed in the Greek and Roman 
classics, and drew upon them for materials of thought as well 
as for models of style and language, f 



*Hobbes, who commenced the study of Greek, and translated Thucydides at a very 

advanced age, and the whole (if the Iliad and the Odyssey after his eighty-sixth year, 

has somewhere made this remarkable observation: that"Ue who seriously contem- 
plates the utter extinction of civil Liberty in the world, would do well to commence his 
operations by destroying the literary remains of antiquity." It is asserted bj the 
biographer ol Sir William Jones that the ardent attachment to liberty ami the uncon- 
querable detestation of arbitrary governments for which that illustrious scholar was 
distinguished, he derived from his early acquaintance with the republican writers of 
Greece and Rome. 

|-It -lands an eternal and unanswerable argument in favor of Classical Learning that 
.ill the great masters of English Literature from the revival of letters in Europe down to 

the present time, as Cowley, Milton, Addis Pope, Steele, Gray, Byron, Johnson, 

Greenville, Fox, Pitt, Burke, Canning, Hallam, Herschel, Brougham— all those almost 
without exception who have done essential service to the cause of science, or Bgured 
( onspicuously on the political arena, have been line Classical Scholars and have exercised 
their -kill in various species <<i' Latin and Greek composition. Could they all have 



58 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

But, granting the whole assumption on which the argument 
is based, — that the comparison between ancient and modern 
literature is in favor of the latter.: that Bacon, Newton, and 
Locke are superior to Aristotle, Archimedes, and Plato ; 
Hume, Gibbon, and Robertson, to Thueydides, Livy, and 
Tacitus ; Burke, Brougham, and Canning, to Demosthenes, 
Pericles, and Cicero ; Milton, Shakspeare, Coleridge, and 
Byron, to Homer, Eschylus, Horace, and Virgil. Does it, 
therefore, follow, that the ancients should be discarded, and 
their places supplied by modern authors ? Or, are we not 
rather forced upon the conclusion that there are different 
grades and orders of excellence, various as the tastes and 
genius of man ; and that as he who aspires to be a perfect artist 
should never hope to become such by gazing forever on the 
dying Gladiator, or the Apollo Belvidere, so lie who aims at a 
thorough education, — a delicate and just taste, — a useful and 
ripe scholarship, should study the models of every age, and 
become familiar with every degree and species of literary 
excellence. 

We shall not dwell on the proposed substitution of modern 
languages for the ancient. Suffice it that he avIio has acquired 
a knowledge of the latter, holds the key to the former ; and 
that the shortest way to a mastery of the French, Spanish, 



given their united suffrage on this subject, we may conceive they would have spoken in 
the language of Lord Brougham, in his inaugural Discourse before the University of 
CHasgow— ' After forming and chastening the taste by a dilisenl study of those perfect 
models (Latin Classics), it is necessary, to acquire correct habits of composition in our 
own language, first by studying the best writers, and next by translating into them 
copiously from the Greok. This is by far the best exercise I am acquainted with for at 
once attaining a pure English diction ami avoiding the tameuess and regularity of mod- 
ern composition. * * * ::: Study then, 1 beseech you to store your minds with the 
exquisite learning of former ages, that you may always possess within yourselves, 
sources of rational and refined enjoyment, which will enable you to sel al nought the 
pleasures of sense whereof other men are slaves " 



ADDBESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 59 

and Italian, is t<» begin with their sources in the Greek and 
Latin. 5 

The last objection which we were to notice, is that the study 
of the Classics requires too much time. It is not denied that, 
to derive from ir much solid and permanent advantage, it does 
require both time and labor; and in this, it is no exception to 
the general law. Labor, long, patient, unremitting, is the 
condition of all excellence. : and if there be any soundness in 
the views we have taken, although we have not attempted t<» 
give the arguments in favor of Classical Learning, it is well 
worth all the sacrifices which it demands. Would the young 
stndem lay out for himself a course truly comprehensive and 
liberal, — would he acquire, not that "purpureus pannus," that 
showy patchwork of what is called education ; but that various 
and thorough intellectual discipline, — education of the mind, 
which shall bring up to their full proportions the gifts of 
nature, — which shall teach him mental independence, self- 
reliance, the command of his faculties, and give* him a capacity 
for vigorous and sustained intellectual action ; he must come 



*It seems to be universally conceded thai we have no adequate translations of the 
ancient Classics. " I do not know," says Burke in one of his letters to Sir William 
.Tones, " how it is thai Orators have hitherto fared worse in the hands of translators 
than even the poets. I never could heir to read a translation of Cicero. Demosthenes 
Buffers, I think, somewhat less : but lie suffers greatly : .so much that 1 must say that no 
English reader could well conceive from whence he had acquired the reputation of the 
first of Orators," 

Even Mr. Grimke acknowledges that " It is a fact that the great body of those who 
have translated out of Latin and Greek have totally failed." But he undertakes to lay 
the reason of the failure in the unfortunate choice which the translators have made o f 
their respective authors. "Thus," he says t " Pope selected Homer, and Dryden, Vir- 
gil: whereas the latter should have translated the Greek, the former the Latin poet. 
Cowper chose Homer, when he could not have found in the whole compass of ancient 
verse a single poem suited to his peculiar cast of mind." Now this admittingit all to 
be true, may be a good reason for the universal failure of translators ; hut it surely is 
no argument for the preference of the translation to the original We tnusl take the 
fact of our condition as it is ; and it affords no remedy, and bul poor consolation, to he 
tuld thai we have ascertained the causes of i:. 



60 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

up to the work with a high sense of its importance, and with 
no narrow or unworthy spirit.* When Euclid was asked 
by an Eastern prince if he could not devise some more 
compendious mode of teaching him the mathematics, " Hire," 
replied the mathematician. " there is no royal road to 
geometry." With all the discoveries of this wonder-work- 
ing age, it lias discovered no " royal road" to learning. 
We would not have the student expect to arrive at knowledge 
by any " short cut," or by any path other than the same old 
hard and rugged one which his fathers trod. Neither should 
he fall into the common mistake that his Classical education is 



"The new doctrine on the subject of Classical and Mathematical studies, has origi- 
nated in false views of the whole reason and object of education. 4i A variety of 
knowledge," says Heiaclitus, " is no education of the mind ;" — a profound truth, 
which, rightly apprehended, would work a complete reform in our whole system of 
public education. It should never be forgotten, that as instructors, our business is not 
merely or principally to store the mind with items of knowledge, and ideas already the 
property of the world, gathered 'up from all the highways and byways of literature — 
'*' Auroram usqut rt Gangen" Ibis process can add nothing to the existing stock of 
knowledge and must necessarily limit and impoverish the intellect: 
" Encumbering only, where it seems t' enrich.'' 
What is the walking Encyclopedia of whom we hear so much-,— that servile abridgement 
of facts and things which others have furnished to bis hands, to that original, search- 
ing, self-questioning intellect, which has been educated to think, — to analyze, — to com- 
mand its powers : thus taught to reveal the sources of truth and knowledge, and carrying 
within itself the active and eternal principles of self-development '.' 

This study of elements, — this teaching The student to dive into the great deep of mind 
for the discovery of what Uoleridge calls " central truths," — the exponents of universal 
laws, is the true principle, of all proper education. The mind must he turned from the 
study of isolated facts and the mere accumulation of ideas, to the principles on which 
they depend ; and by which they are connected, each in its own place and order, in the 
great system of the universe. The sciolist will indeed teli us that this is reversing the 
Baconian method for the visionary and generalizing processes of Plato and Aristotle. 
By no means. There is this distinction between founding a new science, and teach- 
ing it after it has been solidly established. In the former case, we must proceed 
by a patient and comprehensive induction of particular facts until every principle of 
the system is clearly ascertained Ibit to teach it by the same process would he a most 
useless expenditure; and scarcely a whole life would suffice for the most ordinary 
attainments. Here, we must strike at once home to the great principles which previous 
induction has ascertained ; observing a few leading phenomena merely by way of illus- 
tration. This is iu strict coincidence with the principles of the inductive philosophy 
which makes the collection and classification of facts the means of ascertaining princi- 
ples : thus presupposing the superiority of the latter. 



ADDRESS \T MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 61 

complete, when lie leaves the walls of the University. Col- 
lege is but the nursery of the mind ; and all which the besl 
system of collegiate instruction can do for the student, is to 
furnish him, — not with the acquisitions, — but with the taste- 
and habits of a scholar. It places him in the condition of a 
child which its nurse has taught to go alone. It indicate.- tin 1 
ends which are to be pursued, points out the means, and with 
the aid of a little practical skill in their use, its work is done. 
It is lit:" the student himself to consummate what has been 
thus besrun : and throuerhout thai period of life when the 



& 



pen 



mind is most vigorous and mature, and even in the midst of 
his professional avocations, to " refresh his mind with the sweet 
and silent studies of his youth ;" — to keep up his acquaintance 
with hi< early masters by the habitual study of their noblest 
productions. Ef he cannot enter upon the study of the 
ancient Classics with these enlarged views, and with the 
determination to prosecute it to sonic useful purpose, then, we 
saw let him not undertake what he has not the spirit to 
perform. 

But if he will apply himself to the learning of antiquity 
with a proper spirit, especially if he have any sensibility to its 
beauties, — any reverence for its old and hallowed associations* 
— any secret and delightful sympathy with the master minds 
of the ancient world, then let him go forward in these noble 
and liberal studies: for, though lie may not be able to master 
all their riches, or to feel all their power and beauty, yet will 
he find their toil daily diminishing, and their reward- thicken- 
ing upon him at every step of his progress. He will find 
them in the delight of their ever-recurring associations, in the 
improvement of his taste and judgment, in the pleasure of 



62 .MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

conscious knowledge, in his increased love of whatever is just 
and beautiful in sentiment and language ; and in the practical 
utility, too, of these studies, as revealing the true sources of 
modern literature, — as connecting the mind of the present 
with the mind of the past, — and as unfolding the moral and 
intellectual progress of the human race. 

It may be observed, however, that there are two grades of 
practicable scholarship. The one supposes not only a general 
acquaintance with the standard writers of antiquity whose 
works have reached us, but all that minute and critical skill 
in the peculiarities of the different dialects, in the inflexions, 
accents and particles which the German professors wrangle 
for, and which give to the Greek a versatility and power, a 
melody and beauty beyond those of any language, ancient or 
modern. 

This critical and profound knowledge of the Greek and 
Latin is not expected of the man of mere general knowledge; 
nor is it necessary to a thorough and accomplished education. 
It is for the closest scholar ; and belongs particularly to him 
who is a linguist by profession. 

But the other grade of Classical attainment is both more 
useful and more easy of acquisition. It supposes in the 
scholar such an acquaintance with the ancient languages as 
shall enable him to catch the general tone and spirit of Classic 
literature, to become familiar with the standard productions of 
the best authors, to appreciate the purity, perspicuity, method, 
energy, and severe taste of its standard prose writers, and the 
richness, invention, truth, feeling, and freedom of the poets : 
such a knowledge in fine, as shall expand and elevate the 
mind, purify the taste, improve the judgment, furnish a key 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 63 

to the beauty of Classical allusions, and in the language of the 
London Quarterly Review, " possibly creates taste, a passion, 
an enthusiasm for these studies which shall give a high and 
dignified tone to public lite, or throw a permanent and grace- 
ful refinement into the character of the private man." 

He who adopts this standard of scholarship, enters upon 
the study of ('lassie literature very much as he would visit the 
( buntries whose literature it is : — not with the minute, patient, 
and exhaustive spirit of an antiquary, who must pick up 
every glittering particle from the soil, study every curious 
piece of fresco or mosaic, decypher every antique inscription 
on the mouldering marbles, walk through every sweet vale 
that has been sung by a poet, or wash his hands in every 
spring that has taken its name from a Naiad ; — but rather 
with the spirit af a traveler, who passes over the country with 
a rapid survey, scans it in its grander aspects and outlines, 
inquires into its resources, notes its points of historic or tradi- 
tionary interest, pauses before its mighty monuments of ancient 
glory, — grand even in ruin, — studies well its master-pieces of 
genius and art, its models of painting and architecture, — its 
statues of gods and of godlike men, and returns at last to his 
native land, having not only added to his store 4 of valuable 
knowledge, but having multiplied his sources of intellectual 
pleasure, and imbibed something of the spirit and genius of a 
great and departed people. 

For such an acquaintance with Classical Learning, there is 
ample time in our common course of collegiate instruction; 
and it should be required of every one who makes pretensions 
to a liberal education, if it is not taught in our colleges and 
universities so as to effect these results, the difficulty lie- in 



64 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS 

the mode of teaching; and we should be anxious not to 
dispense with the thing, but to reform the system. 

We arc now done with our proposed examination of the 
popular objections to the study of the Classics as a necessary 
part of public education. The task has been executed hon- 
estly though imperfectly. Let those whose office it is, who 
make the studies of polite literature a business, not a recrea- 
tion, take up the cause to better purpose and do it the justice 
which it demands. 

In education, teachers by profession are the proper reformers. 
It is to them that we look to cherish the liberal spirit of our 
literary institutions, to repress dangerous innovations, and 
especially to stem that current of popular prejudice, which, 
like the sudden rushing of a mountain torrent, dashes madly 
on, sweeping away the ancient land-marks, and bearing both 
good and evil in promiscuous wreck down to their ocean 
grave. It will be a sad day for the cause of letters and of 
education in this country, when they shall turn against it in a 
suicidal hand, by putting out the lights of former times, and 
banishing from the halls of learning the remains of Classical 
antiquity. It will mark an area of literary degeneracy if not 
of political profligacy ; aud the prediction of Simon Grimneus 
in the preface of Plato, will find a shameful fulfillment in a 
country which had promised as much to the cause of sound 
learning as to that of civil liberty. — " Succedet igitur, ut arbi- 
tror, baud ita multo post, pro rusticana sseculi nostri ruditate, 
captatrix, ilia blandiloquentia, robur animi virilis omnc, 
omnem virtutem masculum profiigatura, nisi cavetur." 



Gentlemen of the Society: — The subject which has 



ADDRESS A T MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 65 

been presented, — imperfectly, indeed, to your attention, — 
naturally BUggests the importance of a thorough and finished 
education. The tendencies of the age are all to narrow and 
superficial attainments. The accumulation of wealth, the 
Struggle for political power, and the various projects of physi- 
cal improvement, are the objects which now absorb the public 
mind. The present age, in the confidence of its superiority 
to all its predecessors, is solicitous to throw away every liga- 
ment which has bound it to ancient systems, and to drift wide 
on the ocean of Experiment. It frets under intellectual disci- 
pline. It cannot endure the various and profound research, 
the calm and patient philosophy, of former times. 

In the physical world, it has conquered time and space by 
the aid of machinery; and it is naturally led to look for an 
analagous abridgement of labor in pushing its conquests 
through the world of mind. But here 1 we stand upon different 
ground, and must deal with a new order of elements. In 
physics, it has been permitted to invention, to abridge time 
and labor; but this is only that they may be reclaimed and 
saved to the nobler work of perfecting man's intellectual and 
moral nature. For the effecting of this grand object, to 
which Invention with her whole train of physical improve- 
ments is but the handmaid, there is but one mode. There 
never has been but one; and every attempt must be futile, to 
subvert the established order. That great intellectual pro- 
gress should be decreed as the fruit only of earnest and 
unwearied toil, is an immutable law of mind, — as old and as 
fn-i u as the eternal barriers of the creation. We advise you, 
therefore, to look with suspicion upon any scheme of educa- 
tion which holds out extraordinary facilities ; which promises 



66 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

splendid intellectual attainments and diminished requisites of 
time and labor. The reforming theory which we have 
noticed, is the natural growth of the superficial tastes of the 
age : yet it is not without its alluring features. It flatters us 
with incessant assurances of our superiority to the past; it 
dazzles by its novelty ; it promises brilliant intellectual acqui- 
sitions by short and facile methods; thus accommodating 
itself at once to vanity, to curiosity, to indolence, and to 
ambition, it is not surprising that it should win rapidly upon 
the public mind. 

But, gentlemen, it is for you to make head against this 
delusion. You are coming upon the stage of action at a 
period which demands the most enlarged views, and the most 
thorough and arduous preparation. But whatever that prepa- 
ration be, depend on it, you will be called to stand upon a 
high stage, to act in stirring scenes, and amidst great events. 
Confide not, I beseech you, in the tranquillity of the present 
hour ; and be not surprised, if in your day the very earth 
shall shake under your feet, and the sounds of war and revo- 
lution rend the heavens. Causes are now in action, which, in 
the course of thirty years to come, may change the whole 
face of society, form new political ties, and perhaps make 
this last experiment of a confederated representative Union, a 
negative lesson of warning and instruction to the world 
forever. 

In this approaching crisis, every individual, even the 
humblest, has his duty to perform ; but it is with the young- 
men from our literary institutions that the responsibility will 
mainly rest, of preserving the blessings of a free Constitution 
and transmitting them unimpaired to posterity. This is a 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 67 

grand, a fearful anticipation, but it is no illusion. Men will 
go from these halls and from the bosom of* this Society, to 
make their influence felt in the destinies of the nation. Some 
will be called into our State and National councils ; some will 
sit in the halls of legislation ; some on the bench of justice ; 
and some will stand up as the oracles and ambassadors of the 
Eternal God. Is there one set apart for these high functions 
who will prove recreant to the sacred trust ? Why, then, was 
he singled out from his associates and brought here to a seat 
in these halls of learning? Why was he invested with the 
endowments and advantages of cultivated intellect? Why 
was he girded up for the conflict with the wild and stormy 
elements of existence, if he is to creep off from the field, or if 
he may lay down his armor and slumber on his post ? The 
present emergency tolerates no such timid and temporizing 
character. It demands men of disciplined intellect ; of high 
moral courage ; of unbending devotion to the public weal : — 
men who dare to stem the corruption of the times, and to 
circulate through the mass of moral and political putrefaction, 
an element of life. Such men adorned our early history. 
Such were Jay, and Henry, and Hamilton, and Madison, and 
John Adams, and the kindred spirits of those iron times. 

" Those suns are set : O rise some other such '. 
Or all that we have left is idle talk 
Of old achievements and despair of new." 

Omit, then, no labor or opportunity that may aid you in 
sustaining responsibilities and interests so momentous. En- 
deavor to comprehend all their variety and magnitude. 
Meditate profoundly on your relations to society, and let your 
minds be early imbued with a sense of public duty. Be ava- 
ricious of time. Let not a single sun circle to the West which 



68 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

has not witnessed some visible advancement, — some valuable 
acquisition. Remember, "There is no knowledge which is not 
valuable." Therefore lay the whole world under tribute for 
its accumulation. Gather it from all classes of men ; from 
all sciences and all arts ; and from every highway and lane of 
life. Hear it in the voice of the living world ; — ask it at the 
grave of departed nations. Study humanity in all its aspects, 
whether in the world of letters or in the world of men ; and 
in every thing strive to attain whatever may be compassed of 
human wisdom and human knowledge. Above all, learn the 
great secret of rendering all your knowledge available. 
Hoard it not up in the ore ; purge it from the alloy ; pass it 
through the mint of reflection and philosophy ; mould it over 
and over with practical hand, and stamp it all for use. 

With minds thus cultivated and disciplined for action, your 
prospect is cheering, glorious beyond example. Great mo- 
tives are before you. Bright examples are beaming on your 
path. The roads are broad and open to wealth and office, — 
to whatever in society gives dignity and distinction. Fame 
stands at her proud temple-gate and smiles upon you from 
afar, and, waving her immortal chaplets, beckons you upward. 

Yours, too, is a singular felicity of fortune. Having fallen 
on a most extraordinary age, in a young, great, and free 
country, — yoursel ves in the most favored part of that country 
— at the opening of an eventful crisis in her history, what more 
could even your ambition ask, than to grow up with her litera- 
ture and institutions, and to link your destinies with her rising 
fortunes. The field on which you are to act is indeed fair and 
glorious ; and in the retirement of these Classic halls, you are 
at liberty to survey it with coolness and with resolution. 
Hold it ever in your eye ; gird up manfully for its conflicts ; 



ADDRESS AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 09 

and now, before the business of the world absorbs, or its cares 
distract yon, determine to take your destinies into your own 
Lands and to make them great and noble. 

Finally, above all, whatever be your acquisitions and 
attainments, let them all be consecrated to the cause of hu- 
manity, by a life of useful and beneficent action. This, after 
all, is the true philosophy of existence. For, gentlemen, .it is 
not in the mere cumulation of knowledge, — much less is it in 
the glittering bubbles of ambition, — or in any scheme of mere 
selfish aggrandizement, to fill the mind, and afford it solid and 
enduring satisfaction. To improve and perfect our own moral 
and rational nature, and by the diffusion of virtue and intel- 
ligence, to re-produce the image of God in others, this is the 
only object worthy the sateless, boundless ambition of immortal 
minds. Al 1 else is deceitful and soon to pass away. The 
sun and moon shall fade in the sky ; the heavens shall wax 
old like a garment; yonder stars shall all waste with age, and 
go out like flickering and expiring lamps hung over the 
abandoned tables of a late debauch ; but — Virtue wile 
survive. Deathless is the example of the good: glorious 
and immortal, the rewards of a well-spent life ; and the influ- 
ence of an upright mind, enduring and eternal as the throne 
of God. And when the darkness and infirmities of old age 
shall overtake you, — when the world and all those scenes in 
which you now interest yourselves so warmly, shall grow pale 
on the sight and recede away like a dream, — how delightful 
will it then be to look back without reproach, — with honest 
exultation, upon a life honorably, nobly devoted on the altar 
of humanity and of virtue! Be yours such a life 1 ; yours its 
purity and it- blessedness, — its unfading honors, — its immortal 
rewards ! 



CHAPTEK IV. 

HIS INTEREST IN GENERAL EDUCATION. 

WHILE Mr. Eells was in College, his father removed 
to Ohio, with the expectation that when he graduated, 
his elder brother and himself would unite their energies for a 
time, at least, in establishing an extensive and thorough insti- 
tution of some kind for popular education. This had long 
been a favorite topic of conversation in the family, and both 
the sons had imbibed their father's interest in the execution 
of a plan which afforded scope for the varied talents and 
high attainments of the three. 

During Samuel's senior year, his brother Henry began the 
school in Worthington, Ohio, which they hoped would grow 
into likeness to the ideal they had formed ; and immediately 
after he graduated he hastened to take his place as associate in 
the enterprise, feeling assured that they would make it a large 
and flourishing establishment. On his way, he encountered a 
new experience, which is worthy of notice in passing, because 
it reveals so much of that cool self-reliance to which he owed 
a large share of his success. It was the summer in which the 
cholera was so fearful in its ravages, and whole communities 



HIS CNTEREST IN GENERAL EDUCATION. 71 

were thrown into panic by its presence. When he reached 
Buffalo, he began to feel some symptoms of that terrible dis- 
ease, but resolved to press on, hoping to escape its full devel- 
opment, or to reach his destination before it should come. 
No sooner, however, had he began to feel the motion of the 
boat on the lake than the scourge in its strength was upon 
him. The passengers were greatly alarmed, and not one 
would go near him, but demanded that he be put on shore at 
the first point where the boat could land. He knew that his 
condition required instant attention. There was no physician 
on board, and he could get access to no one. At length, one 
young man felt that he could not allow him to die, without a 
sign of humanity from any others, and approached so near his 
berth that he could speak to him. He induced him to procure 
from some source a large portion of calomel, and took as much 
of it as he dared to take. A short time after, he was put off* 
the boat at Dunkirk, at eleven o'clock at night, and carried to 
a small house near the wharf. All fled from him as from an 
evil spirit. The physician of the village refused to see him. 
When nearly reduced to the collapse state, he brought that 
mysterious influence which was his peculiar possession, and 
which seemed to be a kind of authority, to bear on one or 
two persons, whom he ordered to apply hot water to his body, 
in various modes, to give him the rest of the calomel that 
remained in his pocket, and to attend him, as he should direct, 
through the night. To the surprise of all, who were looking 
for him to die each hour, he was relieved, and after a week's 
detention in that miserable hovel, he was able to proceed to 
Ohio. He did not send to his friends, because he knew they 
could not reach him in time to be of any service, and he was 



72 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

unwilling to distress them when no advantage would result 
from their anxiety. 

On his arrival at Worthington, there was a conference 
respecting the school, as it was proposed to conduct it, when 
much to the disappointment of the family, it was evident that 
the citizens would not take the interest in it necessary to the 
success they desired. Mr. Eells was unwilling to engage in 
so limited an affair as the patrons contemplated, and resolved 
to find elsewhere a location where he could develope, in some 
measure, without restriction, his own ideas respecting a school. 
The consequence was, that the Worthington institution was 
soon after abandoned, and his brother Henry devoted himself 
to his profession, as a clergyman. 

After a little survey of the region, he decided to establish 
himself in Springfield, Ohio, and accordingly went there in 
October, 1832. He knew no one in the town ; he had no 
recommendations that were of avail to him ; there was noth- 
ing without that gave him special encouragement. But he 
went there with the purpose to do two things, and he knew no 
such thing as defeat. One of these things was, to lay the 
foundation for a permanent and flourishing school in Spring- 
field ; the other, to study law under the direction of some one 
of the able lawyers who resided there. His own account of 
the progress he made will be more interesting than any that 
could be furnished from other sources, though there are not a 
few who still remember him as he appeared when he first came 
to that village, as it then was ; and the impression he made 
upon them during those first months of his residence there, is 
vivid still. In a letter of October 31, he says: "I have 
nothing new to write. With me, one day tells precisely the 



HIS LNTEREST IN GENERAL EDUCATION. 73 

same story as another — cither a lazy, listless, idle account of 
nothing to do, or an eternal story of disappointment. 
Every man with whom I converse considers it all wasted 
time, and shuffles me off to somebody else, who plays the 

same game, in the same way. I can hardly get introduced to 
prominent men, and when introduced, it amounts to just noth- 
ing. J am here in Springfield, without money, without 
business, boarding at a hotel, and everybody a stranger!" 

After this summary of his condition and prospects, a fact 
which occurred just at this time will illustrate the true nobility 
of his nature. A young man, whom he had known in New 
York, but who had no claims upon him beyond those of ordi- 
nary friendship, called upon him at the hotel. He was on his 
way west to seek a place of settlement, and in their conversa- 
tion told Mr. Eells that he had not money with which to pay 
his fare to Cincinnati. Almost as destitute as himself, and 
knowing no one of whom he could borrow, he might have 
been excused from any attempt at assistance, but he thus 
writes : "I went to the agent of the stage line, and tried to 

induce him to put M down as paid, on his way-bill, and 

I would give him my note for the amount. But I was 
a stranger to him, he had lost fifty dollars in that way within 
six months, etc., etc. I asked him to send him on, and let 
him pay at Cincinnati. But he was a stranger too; and 
besides he had no authority to do business in that way. I 
then took out what little money I had, and gave it to him, to 
the very last dollar!" 

Under date of November 6, he wrote. 1 to his brother: "I 
labored and toiled, and hurried from house to house, and from 
one man to another, without seeming to excite a particle of 



74 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

interest in an individual. At length I alighted upon one 
family, where I found sympathy and encouragement, and a 
hearty desire to co-operate with me in my design. It is a 
family of wealth, good taste, intelligence, and consistent views 
of whatever pertains to intellectual improvement. I assure 
you it was refreshing to meet such a family, in what I had 
found to be such a desert. They promised me three sons, and 
will detain another at home, who had entered Lane Seminary. 
Soon after, I found another man to whom I made known my 
plan, and he sent for a friend to come and attend my school. 
All this was encouraging, and I went on till I had eight sub- 
scribers. I then found it almost impossible to get a suitable 
room, but finally one was obtained, which will be ready in two 
or three days, and I shall commence forthwith." 

Having thus " established" himself, as he expressed it, he 
determined to begin at once the study of law. This was not 
with any definite purpose to enter upon the practice of the legal 
profession, for he was inclined to be a teacher for life. But he 
thus writes of the matter : " I have entered my name in the 
office of Samson Mason, Esq. , and commenced reading law to- 
day. Whether it will ever be of any practical use to me, I 
cannot say, but as long as I can study it under such a lawyer 
as Mr. Mason, for the sum of fifty dollars a year, and teach 
school at the same time ; and so long as I know it will, at least, 
do me no harm ; and so long as I know that Cicero, in his "De 
Legibus," says that all the Roman youth, who had claim to 
any share of polite learning, made themselves masters of the 
Twelve Tables in their very boyhood, so long I shall consider 
a tolerable knowledge of the theory, history, and principles of 
law, especially of the laws of our own country, as not to be 



His [NTERE6T IN GENERAL EDUCATION. fO 

lightly esteemed, whatever may be my future condition, or 

profession." After he had opened his school, he gives a.s a 
picture of his success and prospects, what certainly may be 
regarded as illustrating the "day of small things," and one 
with less perserverance would have been inclined to despise it, 
and seek some where else a more promising situation. This is 
contained in a letter of Nov. 22d : "It would take a longer 
time than I can spare, to recount the long catalogue of reverses 
I experienced, during the fortnight I was held in duresse. 
Suffice it to say, that after two whole weeks of the hardest 
work, I began with just two scholars ! Besides these and 
myself, there was no living thing upon the premises, save a 
certain little mouse, which did come and seat himself in a 
knot-hole of the wall, about three feet from the floor, 
for the ostensible purpose of witnessing the progress of the 
pupils, and the general order and regulations of the establish- 
ment ; but whose real object, no doubt, was to assume the 
attitude and demeanor of an interested spectator, and then go 
away to his friends and confederates, and make game of us, 
and our ridiculous proceedings ! I have now nine scholars, 
and several more talk of coming. I am not all discouraged, 
for I have no doubt I shall by and bye have as many as I can 
receive." The tuition of his first quarter fell short of meet- 
ing his current expenses about twelve dollars. 

Such was the beginning of an Institution which afterwards 
grew into one of the most valuable and flourishing seminaries 
in Southern Ohio ; and such the material of him w r ho resolved 
that this should be its history. The amount of work he 
accomplished during the succeeding months was almost incred- 
ible, and told very heavily upon his health. He remarked to 



76 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

a friend who urged him to be economical of his strength, when 
he left college, that he did not expect to live more than ten 
years, and he intended to crowd those years as full as possible; 
and he seemed to act perpetually under the influence of that 
prophecy and resolution, as both night and day bore witness to 
his effort. Having gathered a large school, he began the 
harder task of cultivating the literary taste of the people. 
For this purpose, he induced them to form what he called a 
Lyceum, of which he was the moving spirit, and to which he 
was obliged to contribute most of the interest. He wrote a 
series of articles for the principal paper of the town, called 
" Papers on Education," which were regarded as very able and 
valuable ; the design of which was to stimulate the citizens to 
greater zeal in this direction, with the ulterior design to obtain 
a commodious building, and a proper endowment for the 
Institution he desired to see founded by them. A general 
statement of what he was doing is given in a letter to his 
parents of March 28, 1833 : "I have now as many scholars 
as I want. I spend one evening each week in delivering a 
lecture to my school, and one at the Lyceum. I read some- 
thing more of Law, (so Mr. Mason says) than students 
ordinarily do, who devote their whole time to the study ; 
during the past week I have dissected more than two hundred 
and sixty pages. I am now lecturing my pupils on the 
advantages of science ; from this I shall " slide gently round 
the curvature" to a course of moral and religious instruction. 
All these are extra lectures, and they are well attended." 

While thus devoting himself to his school in the carrying 
out of his theory of teaching, he delivered regularly public 
courses of lectures on Astronomy and Geology, for the most 



HIS [NTEREST IN GENERAL EDUCATION. M 

part writing them, and continued thcsr labors during the most 
of the two years which he spent in Springfield. The effect of 
this labor, while very beneficial to the population, was very 
serious upon his own always fragile constitution, and he 
became convinced that he must give up a portion of what he 
had undertaken. This brought before him directly the ques- 
tion touching the practice of Law. After mature deliberation 
he decided to be a Lawyer, though not until he had accom- 
plished some monument for himself, that would commemorate 
his interest in popular education. That he could not, however, 
be long engaged in what so severely tasked him, appears from 
his account of his health in a letter dated July 3 : " I have 
been, as you know, somewhat out of health for several months. 
For the last six weeks I have been very low, and failing 
rapidly. A week ago my situation was somewhat alarming. 
My strength has almost left me, my body is emaciated almost 
to a skeleton, my eyes are frightfully sunken, and my bowels 
literally fallen in ! 1 could not take a long breath without 
great pain, and my disease has developed in a dry and most 
distressing cough, which will wear me out unless it leaves me 
speedily. Perhaps you wonder that I am not alarmed for 
myself in these circumstances. I answer, no ! I. am willing 
to suffer, to spend, and be spent, in this way, if such is 
the will of God. When my sufferings were at their height, 
I felt the beauty of that sentiment of the inspired Apostle, 
'whom, not having seen, we love; in whom, though now we 
see Him not, yet believing, rejoice with joy unspeakable, and 
full of glory !' Did you ever realize, feel, the force and beauty 
of that remarkable expression ?" 



Contrary to expectation, he gradually recovered in soi 



lie 



78 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

measure, from this low state, and was able to give something 
of his wonted energy to the duties still upon him. As the 
reward for his devotion, and particularly as the fruit of those 
"Papers upon Education," to which allusion has been made, a 
subscription was started for the erection of an Academy 
Building, which was soon completed ; and he had the satisfac- 
tion of beholding the contrast between the present condition 
and prospects of the place, and the state of things with which 
he became so painfully familiar but two years before. It will 
be proper to place in this enduring record, some extracts from 
these " Papers" as embodying his sentiments on this important 
subject. 

" We believe that all intelligent men will agree with us in 
the following facts : First, that in the hands of the growing 
generation of this State will be placed, and in a few years 
must be placed, vast responsibilities, both as respects this par- 
ticular State, and the country at large. Second, that for the 
faithful discharge of a trust, so high and such as has seldom 
been committed to men, an early and thorough intellectual and 
moral training is indispensable. Third, that whatever may 
be our skill, our industry, and our enterprise, in art, trade, 
commerce, aud agriculture, the standard of education is gen- 
erally low, too low, if our youth are to be prepared to discharge 
honorably and manfully the high duties to be imposed upon 
them, and to anticipate the high destinies which await them. 
Fourth, that this evil may be removed — is rather incidental 
than necessary.* With these facts before us, we hold it to be 
the duty of every man, however limited his means, or humble 



*It must be remembered that this was written forty years ago, before our excellent 
public school system, which in part recognizes these facts, had been inaugurated. 



BOS CNTEREST IN GENERAL EDUCATION. 71) 

his abilities, to do what he can to impress their importance on 
the minds of the people; to come up boldly to the work him- 
self, and to stimulate and encourage those around him. The 
occasion for any apathy respecting it, is not that the advan- 
tages of education are disputed or doubted. If this was ever 
a question, it has long since been settled by public sentiment. 
Nor is the difficulty resolvable into the indifference of parents, 
as to what they believe to be the happiness of their children. 
Such a supposition is contradicted by the voice of nature, and 
by all those manifestations of sympathy and kindness which 
overflow from the perennial and uncorrupted well-spring of a 
parent's heart. Yet it may be, that notwithstanding all the 
prodigality of tenderness and indulgence often lavished on 
their children, the mind, the soul, that image of God in them 
in which centers all that is noble and immortal of our nature, 
is left by those who love them best like an uncultivated and 
profitless field, where the wild beast makes his lair, and on 
which no dew or rain descends. Here, then, we reach the 
real nature of the evil. It arises, not from want of affection, 
nor from indifference to what seems to be the happiness of the 
child, but from wrong views of that in which happiness consists. 
The parent imagines that it consists in wealth, not observing 
that care increases with men's possassions, and that " riches 
take themselves wings and fly away ;" or in pleasure, not 
reflecting that he who drinks of that Circean cup is often 
transformed into a brute, and incapacitated for the enjoyments 
of a moral and rational nature ; or in honor, not considering 
that the bubble to which ambition aspires, may be crushed in 
the grasp. It is such false and partial views as these, that 
the difficulty lies; false, because they mistake the proper 



80 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

objects of human pursuits ; and partial, because they are 
founded on the appearances of things, and not on the results 
of reason and experience. The truth is, man's substantial 
happiness does not, and cannot, depend on the gratifications of 
sense ; much less, on those adventitious circumstances of 
fortune which may happen indiscriminately to all, and of 
which it may be said with emphasis that no man can tell 
whence they come, or whither they go. Every thing thus 
dependent must vary with circumstances, as a feather will be 
carried before the wind, or a vessel will partake the motion of 
the element which bears it. But it is essential to the very idea 
of happiness that it be not uncertain, liable to be blown away 
by every gale of fortune. It must be certain, and permanent. 
It must be within control, and therefore must spring from 
within the man himself, since all without him depends on 
almost any thing else than his own individual will. If these 
views be correct, our language would be this. You are a 
parent, and you would provide for the highest temporal and 
eternal welfare of your children. For this you are willing to 
toil, forego your own convenience and pleasure, to sacrifice 
time, health, strength, and whatever of this world's comforts 
you hold dear. We entreat you, then, do not mistake the 
means, by which that happiness is to be obtained. Do not 
waste your time and labor in the pursuits of a glittering phan- 
tom. Consider how misdirected are the efforts, of any nature, 
which regard the body, but neglect, and by neglect abuse, that 
nobler and better part, the mind. Is it the body, or the mind, 
which has dignified and adorned human life with innumerable 
institutions and improvements, till it has made the world a 
theatre of wonders? Is it the body, or the mind, which 



HIS INTEREST I.\ GENERAL EDUCATION. 81 

leaving the earth, ranges the starry regions, and takes the 
dimensions and distances of the planets, and detects the laws 
and unfolds the mysteries and revolutions of nature? Is it 
the body or the mind that does not go down to "corruption, 
earth and worms," that is destined to the sublimities of an 
immortal existence, as it shall aet on a more splendid theatre, 
and amid higher and nobler scenes? The mind is that which 
thinks, reflects, anticipates, rejoices, hopes. It is all within 
us that is etherial, exalted, and worthy to be the crowning 
work of that eternal and omnipotent Mind of which it is at 
once the offspring and the image. 

If yon are a parent, what wiser, worthier object can engage 
your anxiety and labor than the proper education of those 
whom God has given to your charge? How can you better 
guard them against those habits of vicious indulgence which, 
if permitted in early life, will lead to confirmed and hopeless 
dissipation ? How can you better provide for their respecta- 
bility and usefulness? What better inheritance can you give 
them, than that which consists in a well-ordered mind and a 
well-cultivated heart? You may leave them houses and 
lands ; but how often is wealth a curse, instead of a blessing ! 
How often docs the profligate heir squander, in a year, the 
paternal inheritance; which was carefully and anxiously laid 
up by the savings and the labor of a lifetime ! In the fullness 
of your affection, you may provide them with every mean- of 
sensual gratification. But how often have y#u seen the flower 
and pride of a family ruined by being furnished the oppor- 
tunity for early indulgence, till having debased both his nature 
and his name, he goes down to a disgraceful and premature 
grave ! Not only so : How often do you behold the influence 



82 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

of his example going down, like a hereditary pestilence, from 
father to son, thus sending the curse prolonged far into future 
generations ! Is it for this that you are willing to toil, to rise 
early and sit up late, and eat the bread of carefulness ? Beware, 
then, lest with so noble an object, you fail of reaching it. 
You cannot fail, if, instead of limiting your labors to the gross 
and uncertain advantages of sense, you provide for your child 
that thorough moral and mental training which we understand 
by a good education. This will be to him a substantial and 
ever-growing treasure. It is equally beyond the reach of 
private malice and of open foes, unaffected by change, uncor- 
rupted by age, abiding. Friends may desert him, the flames 
may consume his dwelling, his possessions may be taken from 
him by force, by misfortune, or by fraud ; but he still retains 
a treasure dearer than them all. Give this to him, and if the 
act does not repay itself, it will surely be recompensed by the 
beloved object of your cares. When, under your generous 
treatment, he shall begin to be conscious of his own worth, he 
will be able to appreciate your motives and your effort. He 
will respect you for your wisdom, and love you for your kind- 
ness. The light, small and feeble though it may be, which 
you have trusted to his care, he will return to you in your 
darkness, to cheer your heart, and to shine with tenfold more 
beauty and splendor on the twilight gloom of your declining 
years. And when your head shall rest on the pillow of death, 
and he comes to your bed-side to catch your last look and 
receive your dying benediction, you will have the consolation 
of reflecting that you have bequeathed to him a richer legacy, 
that you have done more for his permanent and highest 
welfare, than though you had surrounded him with the 



His INTEREST IN GENERAL EDUCATION. 83 

luxuries of every clime, and poured at his feet the riches 
of the Indies. 

If these things are so, it is a most important question as 
to the manner in which education thus guards and blesses 
men. This it does, first, by accustoming them to early habits 
of industry. There is in human nature a tendency to inactiv- 
ity, a kind of moral gravitation, which holds the mind in a 
state of rest, till it is made to change that state by the applica- 
tion of some external moral force. In adults, this force con- 
sists partly in the necessity for exertion to gain the means of 
subsistence, and partly in the love of wealth, the love of fame, 
and all those great motives which inspire the hopes and incite 
the labors of the mass of mankind. It is manifest, however, 
that in youth the power of these incitements is seldom felt. 
In them, that which opposes this gravitation is the love of 
pleasure ; always dangerous, and rendered far more so by the 
natural delight which the parent takes in the gratification of 
his children, and by those mistaken views of happiness we 
have considered. Hence, in the moral economy of the juvenile 
mind, the object is to gain the greatest amount of pleasure 
with the least labor. Hence the resort to scenes of excitement 
and dissipation, the festive dance, the midnight revel, the 
gaming-table, works of romance, and all those captivating 
indulgences which fasten with stronger and stronger grasp 
upon the deluded victim, till the equilibrium of his mind is 
destroyed, his moral sensibilities are blunted, and he sinks 
into imbecility, if not into the grave. The proper antidote to 
this evil is the training the youthful powers to habits of 
industrious and patient application. The philosophy of the 
remedy is very simple. Attention cannot be given at the 



84 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

same time to the cultivation of the mind, and to mischievous 
and vicious practices. Besides, there is something softening, 
something humanizing, in intellectual pursuits, which takes 
away not only the power, but in great measure also the desire, 
to indulge in such practices. The regular intermissions of 
study, and seasons of relaxation and innocent amusement, 
come in lieu of exciting and therefore dangerous pleasures. 
Nor do we hesitate to affirm that these seasons of innocent 
hilarity are anticipated with as much ardor, and enjoyed with 
as keen a relish, as are those other scenes more gross and 
giddy, which are the life of him whose highest ambition is to 
become the admiration of the festive circle and the votary of 
fashionable dissipation. 

But another and stronger reason for our position, is the 
power of early education to form the moral habits and char- 
acter of the individual. We do not pretend that the early 
culture of the mind will subdue the depravity of the heart, 
or that it will change the villain who has already become 
hoary in iniquity into the peaceful and obedient citizen, and 
restore him to the bosom of society, to hope, to happiness, and 
to virtue. Its power consists not in reforming, but in pre- 
venting the necessity for reformation. It does not advance to 
the territory of the foe, after he has established himself in his 
strongholds, to battle with him in his own intrenchments and 
before his own citadel ; but it intercepts the approach of his 
forces and scatters them, cuts off his supplies, aud renders him 
comparatively weak and harmless. It does not rally for the 
combat, and rush on the thick bosses of the giant's buckler, 
but steals noiselessly to the side of the unconscious sleeper, 
and strangles the infant Hercules in his cradle. And here we 



His INTEREST IN GENERAL EDUCATION. 85 

cannot but remark upon that wise and beautiful economy of 
Providence, which has connected the noble and rational 
pursuits of the mind with our most refined and exalted 
pleasures. The human powers are not only made capable of 
being cultivated and improved, but in proportion as they are 
perfected do the inducements to persevere become numerous 
and powerful. The desire for knowledge grows with its attain- 
ment, and the same process which ennobles and strengthens 
the mind, and enlarges its capacity for enjoyment, provides 
also the means by which that capacity may be filled. In 
proportion as any man detaches his thoughts from the sensible, 
and fixes them on the spiritual world ; in proportion as he 
examines the laws of nature, extends the sphere of his know- 
ledge, strengthens his intellect, refines his taste, acquaints 
himself with the mysteries of art and science, and holds com- 
munion with those splendid and mighty minds that have 
adorned the annals of past ages; in proportion, in fine, as he 
becomes a profound and accomplished scholar, just in that 
proportion will he be prepared to relish the most pure and 
elevated enjoyments, and at the same time be advanced in the 
moral dignity of his nature. 

Such, moreover, is the pleasure of each new acquisition, such 
the increased facility with which it is made, that he does not 
tire, nor waver, nor turn aside, nor remit his ardor in his 
course, but, ever flushed with new victories and confident of 
success, he girds up his energies for his glorious career. And 
during all this, unless there is some special perversity of heart, 
some uncommon or deeply-rooted propensity to evil, his 
intellectual excellence and moral worth will advance hand in 
hand. lie will perpetually progress in whatever there is of 



8b MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

dignity or of glory in his nature, while he yet longs for higher 
and nobler attainments in knowledge and virtue, and, looking 
upward, pants for a clearer vision and a wider range. Mys- 
terious as is the connection between the moral and the mental 
in character, the fact of such connection cannot be disputed. 
Who ever observed that unsocial or unamiable qualities were 
generated by the proper discipline of the youthful mind? 
Who ever saw the man of sullen and savage character, that 
monster in the intelligent creation, whose mind had been 
subjected to the gentle influences of early cultivation? 
Among all the criminal and grossly immoral of the land, how 
many have been men of polished and cultured intellects ? 
The man who by a good education, such an education as we 
recommend, is led to understand the nature of his relations to 
God and his fellow men, who is admitted as an enraptured 
spectator of all the ten thousand scenes of beauty and glory 
and grandeur, with which God has garnished the universe, 
and who is taught to look through all these seeming anomalies 
and irregularities which appear on the face of His works, and 
perceive the perfect peace and order that reign throughout the 
whole of His vast empire, must feel his moral nature gradually 
and sweetly conformed to the spirit that everywhere prevails, 
and may partake of a happiness resembling the " joy unspeak- 
able" which is tasted by the angels of God. 

This, then, is the point to which your anxieties should be 
directed. The time is coming when your child must be called 
out from the tranquil retreat of the domestic fireside, upon the 
turbulent arena of common life, to mingle in its scenes of 
depravity and vice, to engage in its conflicts of interest and 
passion, and to buffet all those stern realities which will try 



BIS INTEREST IN GENERAL EDUCATION. 87 

his virtue, and bring to practical remembrance the lessons we 
would teach him. Will yon not do all in your power, now 
while it may be done, to give him that comprehensive educa- 
tion which shall enlarge his views, elevate his aims, strengthen 
his intellect, reform his moral sensibilities, and at the same 
time that it prepares him to fill some high station in society, 
Avill also provide the most probable security for his virtue? 
If you adopt a contrary policy, allow him to form idle habits, 
turn him loose among the profane, and neglect the temporal 
and eternal interests that have been committed to your charge 1 , 
you need not accuse him of ingratitude if he become the 
disgrace and shame of your manhood, the burden and curse 
of your old a«;c, and bring down your gray hairs with sorrow 
to the grave." 

As has been said, these arguments and appeals had general 
effect upon the people. The erection of an edifice was made cer- 
tain, and having finished the course of Law reading necessary 
for examination, that he might be admitted to the Bar, Mr. 
Eells gave up his school in Springfield. He was examined in 
Columbus, in December following, and in February, 1835, 
went to Cincinnati to begin the practice of his profession. 

Although not in the order of time, it seems proper when 
speaking of his interest in education, and in a chapter especially 
devoted to his personal experience in teaching, to introduce 
his Address delivered in Cincinnati, in October, 1838, before 
the "College of Teachers/' on the "Moral Dignity of the 
Professional Teacher." This address sets forth the ideas that 
had long dwelt in his mind respecting this most honorable 
and elevated office, and may well close what is to be said 
concerning this department of his career. 



ADDRESS 

BEFORE THE 



OLLEGE OF EACHERS, 



T 



IN CINCINNATI 



Gentlemen of the College of Teachers : 

So large a share of the public interest has been engrossed 
by the objects of your association, that the lecturer must 
despair, either of striking the mind by the novelty of his 
views, or of suggesting any useful experiments which have 
not been already thoroughly canvassed, and perhaps carried 
out into practical operation. 

Without attempting, therefore, to discuss the merits of 
particular schemes of education, or to shed any new light upon 
those questions which have been so ably handled by your 
committees, my observations will be general in their character, 
and addressed rather to the community at large than to that 
particular portion of it which is represented by your asso- 
ciation. 

The efforts made for the universal diffusion of knowledge, 
form a strong and characteristic feature of the age. The 
maxim so often quoted in this Convention, that " knowledge 
is power," begins to be practically comprehended ; and the 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. 89 

dissemination of free principles, and of the influence of popular 
forms of government, has imposed the necessity of popular 
intelligence; without which, it has been settled by the expe- 
rience of ages, that political liberty cannot Long endure. The 
spirit of educational reform, therefore, has gone searchingly 
abroad, subjecting to the test of the severest scrutiny every 
department of popular instruction and every system of liberal 
study. The press groans with its labor of throwing off books 
and pamphlets, devoted, in some form or other, to the 
subject of education. Men of all creeds, and of every character 
and profession, unite here on common ground ; and seem to 
vie with each other in fostering those institutions which have 
for their object the diffusion of knowledge and the elevation 
and regeneration of the popular mind. Now amidst all this 
zeal, this universal ado about " education/' it may be well to 
descend a little below the surface, and to enquire whether the 
office itself) of a teacher, has occupied that place which it 
ought to hold in the public estimation ? Has not the public 
mind been unaccountably slow in coining up to a due sense 
of the true dignity and importance of the great business of 
instruction ? Have eminent talent and eminent services, 
devoted to this work, commanded either that generous admira- 
tion or that pecuniary requital, which they would have ensured 
in any other of the liberal professions? I speak not now of 
individual instances. Exceptions there are to all general 
rules. But has the profession of teaching — as a profession — 
had that rank assigned to it which, from its high responsibility, 
its intrinsic and incalculable importance, and the rare qualities 
of both mind and heart which are requisite for its successful 
prosecution, it imperiously demands? True, it has been 



90 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

accorded in terms that the faithful and successful teacher is 
a public benefactor. But how, we ask, does the public man- 
ifest its gratitude ? Is it by a munificent liberality which 
covers him with abundance, and secures his entire devotion 
and his undivided services, by placing himself and his family 
beyond the reach of want? What employment demands such 
skill, such preparation, such rare and exalted qualities, and 
such constant and wearisome labor, and is at the same time so 
inadequately paid ? Who ever knew of a pension, be it never 
so small, settled upon the veteran teacher who has been forced 
from his labor by age, and by the toil and sacrifice of his pro- 
fession ? Is it by showering him with honors, that a grateful 
public manifests its gratitude? When was it ever heard, that 
the most brilliant success and the most eminent services in 
the capacity of a teacher, were a recommendation to any civil 
office, or to any station of public profit or honor ? And, in 
the common intercourse of life, what political mendicant, what 
vapid and declaiming demagogue, does not fill a larger space 
in the public eye, and gather a larger share of public 
estimation ? 

Mark yonder feeble and decrepit old man, as, panting with 
fatigue, and grasping his staff with both his hands, he slowly 
makes his way along one of your public streets. He is a 
veteran teacher. He commenced his employment in early 
life, and the first scene of hi? labors was on a bleak and rocky 
hill-side, in the interior of his own New England. When 
the call of his country rung among his native mountains, he 
left his peaceful charge, to meet her enemies on the tented 
field, and to bring home her eagles in triumph from the scene of 
battle. After the achievement of our independence, he returned 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. *)1 

to his favorite employment; and became one of a small hand, 
who, with the axe and the rifle, plunged into the Western 
forests, and amid toil, and danger, and suffering, laid the 
foundations of a great and prosperous people. With his own 
hands, he helped to pile the logs of the first sehool house that 
was erected on the spot where now stands your proud and 
beautiful city; and having reared, he entered it, and with the 
devotion of an apostle, officiated as the instructor of many 
whose sons and whose daughters we may now recognize 
around us, as the founders of families and the pillars and 
ornaments of society. Thousands of youth, in his day and 
generation, has he taken from the paternal roof, and given 
back to their parents and their country, with a discipline and 
a cultivation worthy of both. They have gone out into the 
four quarters of the world; they may be found scattered 
through all the ranks of society, in all the arts and occupations 
of life, and in all the liberal professions, which they live to 
dignify and adorn. Better than the most successful candidate 
for popular favor, better than he for whom we erect triumphal 
arches, and whose path we strew with garlands, has he merited 
the proud title of benefactor of his country ! But what is his 
reward *? Throughout life he has struggled with embarrass- 
ment and want ; and, forced at last by the infirmities of three 
score and ten years, from his profession, he lingers out, in an 
obscure part of your city, a stinted and eompanionless old 
age, with no consolation for a life of unrequited toil but the 
reflection that it has been a useful life — devoted, with fidelity 
and singleness of purpose, to the well-being of his country and 
his fellow men. Mark now, the generosity, the justice, of a 
grateful and discriminating public! This palsied and infirm 



92 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

old man — this man who, more than statesmen or politicians, 
deserves to be honored with monumental marble, and days of 
public festivity and rejoicing — has come out to feel the warm 
light of the sun, and to gaze once more upon those new scenes 
which have arisen around him, and which so mournfully 
remind him that he is becoming " a stranger in the midst of a 
new succession of men." The young, the gay, and the fash- 
ionable, throng past him ; but ungreeted, unnoticed, he totters 
on. The men of business rush by him, and jostle him as they 
go. Presently he hears a confusion of mingled voices, and 
then cries and shouts rend the air. Planting his staff before 
him, he stops : and, as he raises his dimmed eyes, he discovers 
a hurrying and gathering crowd. He inquires the meaning, 
from some passer-by ; and learns that it is the gala-day triumph 
of some political adventurer — some heartless demagogue, who 
has obtained his ascendency by feeding the passions and 
flattering the vanity of the people : 



The statesman of the day 



A pompous and slow-moving pageant comes. 

Some shout him, and some hang upon his car 

To gaze in 's eyes and bless him. Maidens wave 

Their kerchiefs, and old women weep for joy ; 

While others, not so satisfied, unhorse 

The gilded equipage, and turning loose 

His steeds, usurp a place they well deserve. 

Why ? What hath charmed them ? Hath he saved the State ? 

No. Doth he purpose its salvation ? No. 

Thus idly do we waste the breath of praise, 

And dedicate a tribute, in its use 

And just direction sacred, to a thing 

Doomed to the dust, or lodged already there." 

But this inadequate estimate of the services of the profes- 
sional teacher does not end with working individual injustice. 
It is a great and serious evil — an evil which pervades our 
whole moral and social system ; and the very last to be reached 



AJ)DRB88 BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. 93 

In- the progress of educational reform. It cramps the opera- 
tions of every department of instruction; it cripples the ener- 
gies of the practical teacher, and cuts off from the profession 
many who, with abilities which mighi enable them to shine in 
any of the walk- of life, naturally turn to that which offers 
the widest Held to tlx-ir ambition, and which yields hack to 
toil and to sacrifice, the most generous return-. This i- not 
mere theory : it is plain common sense. Water doe.- not seek 
its level by a surer law, than that which divert- great abilities 
into the channel whore they will meet with the best reward. 
Men of the most splendid talent- and the most profound learn- 
ing, are yet hut men ; and they are ruled by the same motive.-, 
-line principle- and considerations of personal interest, 
that rule other men : with this difference — that they are much 
more strongly influenced by that viceof great mind-, ambition. 
With such men, this is generally the governing passion; but 
the present i- a sordid and money-getting age; and we now 
and then find one who seemed destined to nobler things — who 
once gazed with an unblenched eye like the eagle's, on some 
far and glittering summit of ambition — descending to mine in 
the base earth, and to mix in the vulgar scramble tor gain. 
He ha- forsaken the objects of his earlier and purer worship, 
and has learned to bow the knee to Mammon. This then 
is the motive next in order: and by these two the world is 
ruled. The great heart of the universal world ever beat- 
to these two master passions: the love of Honor and the 
of Gain. The first governs the intellectual few; the 
second, the unintellectnal many. Now, should not he who 
would devise a general scheme of education, proceed philo- 
sophically and practically, upon the-,, two great elements of 



94 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

human action ? Not that such a system should be framed to 
encourage avarice or an inordinate ambition : but that, pro- 
ceeding upon the known philosophy of human nature, and 
taking advantage of the strongest principles of human action, 
it should hold out such inducements as would attract and 
secure to itself the very ablest talents and the very highest 
qualifications that the country could produce, or rewards com- 
mand. We boast of many such in the ranks of our profes- 
sional teachers, even in the present state of things; men who 
would throw lustre around any station of private or of public 
life, and who have laid their country under lasting obligations. 
But we would have all of this character; from the dignified 
professor of the college or high -school, to the humblest school- 
master, whose pupils are children of the tenantry of our new 
settlements on the farthest verge of civilization. We are not 
willing that any portion of these youth, in whom we behold 
the future men of our land, and who, in their moral and intel- 
lectual character, aud their capacity to conduct the affairs of a 
great people, are to fill up the grand idea of the American 
Nation, shall be turned over for a week — no, not for a single 
day — to a cheap and drivelling instruction. We hold their 
education at a priceless estimate. To whomsoever we commit 
these youth, to them do we commit the destinies of the nation ; 
and the stake is too mighty, the interests are too vast and 
momentous, to be entrusted in one instance to common 
hands. 

In estimating the moral dignity of auy work, there are 
three things which must be taken into the calculation : 
First — the intellectual and moral qualities which it requires ; 
Secondly — the nature and power of the individual agency which 



AJ>DRESS before the college of teachers. 95 

is exerted; and Thirdly — the value and magnitude of its 
general results. Taking these three elements, let us fix a 

standard; and thereby form a moral estimate of the office 
of the Professional Teacher. 

The faculty of communicating knowledge, is itself a noble 
and high endowment. It is this which mainly distinguishes 
man from the brute creation : for, though endowed with 
understanding, how feeble would be the lights which any 
man could strike out by the operations of his own solitary, 
unassisted reason? Without the faculty of communicating, 
there could be no perpetuation of knowledge, no great im- 
provement in art or science ; and, by consequence, no progress 
of the human species. Writing and language are the instru- 
ments by which we hold inter-communion with each other ; 
which make the thoughts and feelings of every individual 
mind the property of all ; and which constitute the improve- 
ments and discoveries of each successive age, the birthright 
and inheritance of the whole human race. Thus we are all 
the preceptors of one another. We live only on condition of 
being taught by our fellow-men. In this sense also, all 
former generations of men are teachers of the present ; and 
the lights which we acquire, we in turn do but hold in trust 
for future times. How T admirable is that moral administra- 
tion which, by a fundamental law of man's nature, makes his 
progress, and whatever elevates and ennobles him in the scale 
of existence, to depend upon each turning his own individual 
acquisitions into partnership stock, and upon this constant and 
universal interchange of feeling, and thought, and knowledge! 

Moreover, this faculty of communicating, is a self-main- 
taining, self-improving power. It is like the sun of the 



96 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

firmament ; traversing in glory the moral heavens, dispensing 
floods of light in all directions, and illuming every orb which 
circles within its system, yet without the smallest diminution 
of its own original and exhaustless splendors. Eather does it 
acquire new lustre from every new dispensation of its glories. 
Like charity, it is twice blessed : It " blesses him that gives 
and him that takes." Thus by the law and appointment of 
Nature, man is made the teacher of his fellow-man ; and 
from this necessary relation springs the chief moral dignity 
of his nature. How much more exalted, then, is that relation 
as it appears to him who is a teacher, not by nature only, but 
by choice and by profession ; in whom it has been perfected 
by cultivation and philosophy ; who has been prepared for 
his work by long years of patient and laborious discipline ; 
and, perhaps at the expense of many noble and generous 
sacrifices, has made it the office and business of life ! Such 
were Aristotle, and Socrates, and Plato, and Seneca, and all 
the great masters of ancient learning and philosophy. Such 
were the founders of the Christian faith. Such was our 
Saviour himself; who " taught as one having authority;" 
and who, when He was about to ascend in a cloud from the 
plains of Bethany, gave it as His last charge to his followers, 
" Go ye, and teach all nations." True, these last were teachers 
of moral truth : but moral truth and intellectual truth are 
allies ; and a cultivated heart must be preceded by a cultivated 
reason. Moreover, the educator should be not less a moral 
than a mental guide. This, by our estimate, is the very first 
requisite of his profession ; and it is this which, so far as 
qualities are concerned, stamps his office with its peculiar 
elevation. Were man a being of pure reason, a mere piece of 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. 1)7 

intellectual mechanism, he would be indeed shorn of half his 
dignity; but the educator might stop with the discipline and 
cultivation of his intellect. But he is made up, not of reason 
only; but of will, of feeling, of moral and social susceptibilities 
and domestic affections. Reason is a tree of sterner growth ; 
but these arc tender plants in a bleak climate — a climate of" 
frost and storm; and they require the protection and cultiva- 
tion of a careful and kindly hand, or in their early springtime 
they will droop and die. The educator, therefore, who over- 
looks or neglects this part of man's nature — though he should 
have made his pupil a prodigy of taste and intellect — though 
he should have enabled him "to speak with the tongues of 
men and of angels" — though he should have imbued his 
mind with the classic lore of all antiquity, and filled it with 
all the philosophy of the schools — has yet done but half his 
work : or rather he has betrayed his trust ; for there is but one 
springtime of our moral existence; and he in whose; charge it 
was to furrow the soil, and sow the precious seed, has permitted 
it to pass unimproved, and beyond recall. 

Moreover, what is the great end and office of education, but 
to prepare man for the scenes in which he is to act, and to fit 
him for all the various duties of life ? Let it then be considered 
how large a portion of these duties — duties which we owe to 
ourselves, to our kindred, to society, and to our Creator — 
spring from the social and domestic relations, and call upon 
the moral part of our nature; and how few of these duties 
there are, which require either great learning or rare intel- 
lectual endowments. If, then, it be the main business of 
education to fit us for the duties of life, how manifest it is 
that the; professional teacher should be a moral as well as a 



98 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

mental guide ; and that, with the discipline of the intellect, he 
should also enlighten the conscience and cultivate the heart ! 
But how shall he do this, except he be himself endowed with 
the same qualities which he undertakes to impress on the 
minds of others ? Can the blind lead the blind ? Can he be 
qualified to impart moral instruction, who has himself no 
cultivated affection, no perception of moral fitness, and no 
weighty and abiding sense of moral obligations ? Let, then, 
the moral dignity of the office of the Professional Teacher be 
judged hereby : That its very first requisite is, moral good- 
ness — the quality which chiefly elevates and ennobles human 
nature, and most assimilates it to the nature of angels and of 
God. 

It is unnecessary to enumerate all the other qualifications 
which are requisite worthily to discharge the functions of a 
teacher. Knowledge he must have, of course — ready, various, 
well-arranged and accurate knowledge ; and when we consider 
what a host of subordinate qualities are requisite for its suc- 
cessful communication, — what diligence, what patience, what 
self-command, what gentleness, what firmness, what forbear- 
ance, what discrimination, what quickness of perception, what 
versatility of adaptation, what knowledge of the mental and 
moral constitution, and what entire devotion of the whole soul 
to the whole work, — we may well ask, "And who is sufficient 
for these things ? " 

But the moral dignity of this office appears, in the second 
place, in its powerful and transforming agency upon individual 
mind. The work of the educator has been compared to that 
of the sculptor, who carves out a beautiful statue from a shape- 
less block of marble. The illustration was common among 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. 99 

the ancients, from whom it was borrowed and very happily 
used by Addison ; but I do not perceive that the subject is 
ennobled by the comparison. For, let the statue be never so 
perfect — let it be wrought by the hand of a Phidias or a 
Lysippus — let it be shaped into the most noble and beautiful 
proportions, and touched with the most exquisite finish — the 
figure is yet but a figure of stone ; hard, cold, lifeless. But 
education does not simply excavate the mind from its native; 
quarry, and cast it into " the mould of form." It works an 
entire change throughout the whole intellectual and moral 
nature. It forms the man anew. It elevates him into a 
loftier sphere of being. It creates new senses of enjoyment, 
new desires, new hopes, new aspirations, and forms the whole 
soul to a nobler and sublimer life. It is as if the statue, while 
the artist was yet bending over it with his chisel, should wax 
warm and start out from the marble j and the breast should 
heave with life, and the eye should burn with living fires, and 
every joint should play smoothly in its socket, and the blood 
should start on its red and rapid courses; even as if the 
Divinity had descended, and breathed into this cold and 
senseless stone the breath of life and the quickening spirit ! 

Do we overestimate the power of education upon individual 
character? Mark then the vulgar and untaught mind, im- 
bedded in ignorance and animalism ; and again contemplate 
the same mind after it has ascended the heights of science, 
and received the impress of moral cultivation. Upon such a 
view, we shall find the power of which we speak, developed 
in the subject of it, under three several aspects : First, in its 
multiplying the sources of his happiness; Secondly, in his in- 
tellectual elevation; and Thirdly, in his improvement as a 
moral being. 

L.ofC. 



100 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

And First, in its multiplying the sources of his happiness. 
The uncultivated man is furnished with a set of social instincts, 
and a susceptibility to a certain grade of gross pleasures ; but 
they all play within a narrow round of animalism ; they are 
often embittered by jealousies, and envyings, and physical 
privations, and can hardly enter into any just notions of 
human happiness. Of the satisfaction which accompanies 
the exercise of the intellectual faculties, he knows absolutely 
nothing. Nor is he less a stranger to the happiness arising 
from a contemplation of the works of nature. Ten thousand 
beautiful and wonderful processes are momently going on 
throughout the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms : 
every blade of grass and every drop of water shuts up within 
itself a world of wonders ; but Nature reveals none of her 
secrets to him. Stars rise and set over his head : moons wax 
and wane ; the earth beneath his feet is everywhere covered 
with divine workmanship ; but he stands amidst the whole 
"with brute unconscious gaze," and turns a sealed eye to 
the beauties and glories which are every where scattered 
through the deep universe about him. In vain, for him, 
has the hand of God decked the earth with beauty, or sown 
with stars the fields of ether. In vain, for him, do air and 
ocean teem with the wonders of microscopic life. In vain, 
for him, does Nature spread out all her scenes of beauty and 
of gladness, and pour around him the melodies of her ten 
thousand voices. Talk to him of these elevated and refined 
enjoyments, or of the pleasures which lie scattered along the 
paths of literature and science, and the description falls 
on his ear " like sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." 
You might as well undertake to describe the rainbow to a 



A.DDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. 101 

man who never saw the light of heaven ; or to one who 
was born deaf, the charms and melodies of music. Yet 
this very individual, moulded by the plastic hand of the 
professional educator, fitted, as we have described, morally 
and intellectually for his work, becomes a different being. 
He becomes the Inhabitant of a different world ; a world 
of thought, taste, intellect, imagination. With what rapture 
does he stand up in the midst of the glorious universe, which, 
when the Creator had finished, and on that primal Sabbath 
" rested from all the work which lie had made," He beheld 
with infinite complacency, and pronounced it " very good." 
lie looks abroad over the works of his Creator, and beholds 
light, and life, and joy, in everything around him. He gazes 
on the visible world, and thanks God that he has been 
created an intelligent spectator of its wonders. He turns 
his eye on the intellectual, and discovers that he is allied 
to his Creator, and to other orders of being ; and exults 
in the consciousness of all that is beautiful and majestic 
in the mind of man. It is his to sympathise with Nature 
and " the quick spirit of the universe," and to appropriate 
all her variety of loveliness. He gazes with delight on the 
noble in man, and the beautiful in woman. He listens with 
rapture to the mingling and sounding elements ; to the 
howling of the midnight storm, to the roar of the cataract, 
and the eternal thunder of the ocean. What value does he 
place upon that office which has thus caused the scales to 
fall from his eyes, and admitted him an enraptured spectator 
of the works of God ! At what price would he consent 
to be thrown back upon his ignorance, his vulgar appetites, 
and his uneducated faculties? At what price would he 



102 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

consent to relinquish the aspirations, by which he has alliance 
with all the great and good ? to give up the pleasures thus 
made possible ? to 

" Renounce the boundless store 



Of charms which Nature to her votary yields , 
The warbling woodlands, the resounding shore, 

The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields, 
All that the genial ray of morning gilds, 

And all that echoes to the song of even ; 
All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, 

And all the dread magnificence of Heaven ? " 



Were it in the power of the teacher to bestow upon each 
of his pupils the fee-simple of a kingdom, he could not endow 
him with so rich and so noble a gift, he Could not do so much 
for his permanent and substantial happiness, as by imparting 
to him that cultivation by which he is enabled to appropriate 
not a kingdom only, but all kingdoms and the glory of them ; 
which makes, not the visible world only, but the empire of 
thought and imagination — the realms of art, and taste, and 
poetry, and fiction, and all the ages of the world, and all 
the dominions of universal Nature — his ; his to understand, 
his to enjoy. 

But, in the second place, we behold the power and moral 
greatness of this agency, in the intellectual elevation of its subject. 
Man, fallen as he is, seems " scarce less than archangel ruined ;" 
and the meanest employments are dignified and made honora- 
ble by their usefulness to the human species. Next, then, to 
moral cultivation itself, what work can be nobler than the 
improvement of the human faculties? And their capacity for 
unlimited advancement opens the most exalted views of that 
power, which can bridge the chasm between the exercises of 
the most ordinary intellect and the sublime operations of a 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. L03 

Newton ; which can waken up the mean and common mind, 

and fill it with divine aspirations, and send it forward on a 
career of boundless progress. Contemplate that progress for 
a moment, as it is developed by education in its subject. The 
first elements of his knowledge consist in bare sensation, the 
impressions of external objects. Memory treasures up the 
perceptions of sensation, and thus lays the foundation for 
future thought. Here he rises from the mere animal into the 
intellectual. He now begins to compare ideas, and to make 
combinations and deductions. Thoughts multiply, knowledge 
accumulates ; and he already exults in the consciousness of au 
intelligent nature, and in the spontaneous workings and 
exercises of the living mind. And now the field of his 
intellectual vision clears up, and widens around him. He 
expatiates in the pictorial realms of the Imagination, or treads 
with more equal and assured footsteps over the fair and divine 
empire of Truth. He questions the elements of Nature, and 
carries the torch of philosophy throughout all her dark 
dominions. He opens the classic page, and holds communion 
with the illustrious spirits of past ages. He turns his eye to 
the broad heavens, and reads the power and wisdom of 
Providence, in the law and order which reign throughout 
the starry world. He opens the chronicle of history, and 
gathers as manna the lessons of wisdom from the experience 
of the past. He ranges the future with a prophet's rapture, 
and embodies the hopes which he gathers of human progress, 
and his visions of " the glory that is to be revealed," in the 
pages of a lofty and calm philosophy, or in the numbers of 
immortal song. And in all that he sees and feels — in the 
wonderful mechanism of the human mind, and in all that 



104 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

perfect order and fitness which reign throughout the stupen- 
dous machinery of material nature — he beholds the hand of 
the Infinite Intelligence, and a type of the Infinite Perfection ; 
and he learns to lift his thoughts, in grateful and devout 
contemplations, to the Great Architect, " forasmuch as He 
that builded the house hath more honor than the house." 

But if such be the progress of this mind here, chained to a 
narrow spot of earth, and darkened by error and ignorance, 
what will it be when it shall be freed from imperfection, and 
shall spring into that new and sublime life which awaits it? 
For it is robbing the agency of the educator of more than half 
its dignity, to consider it as circumscribed by this low and 
temporal scene that is now around us. We must follow it to 
another stage of its development, and throw our eyes down 
the long range of its immortal being. Professional Teacher ! 
whatever impulse you give to the mind of that pupil, now 
under your charge, it is an impulse upon a career that shall 
never end. He will soon be remanded away from your hands 
by the great Parent of all; called to stand upon a loftier 
theatre, and to take a part amid higher and sublimer scenes. 
It is yours to furnish him with a preparation for life ; but 
life itself — what is it but a pupilage for immortality ? As yet, 
we know but little of that, his future state of being; for we do 
but "see through a glass darkly," and "it doth not yet 
appear what we shall be ;" but we have the strongest reason 
to believe, that the mind which you now cultivate with such 
anxiety and pains-taking, will then yield a spontaneous and 
perfect obedience to all the present laws of its nature. It will 
then, as now, be progressive ; not indeed, as now, slowly, and 
laboriously, and fettered by these cares, and this coil of 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. 105 

mortality ; but, springing into its native element, and freed at 
once from every clog and cumbrance, it will sweep on towards 
perfection with an ever-accelerated progress, through eternal 
ages. To what attainments will it grow in that endless course! 
What infinite knowledge ! What immense intelligence! It 
is a glorious anticipation, for both teacher and pupil ; yet not 
less true in philosophy than sublime in thought, that in the 
course of that unending progress, it will not only reach and 
overpass the grandest exhibitions of earthly mind, but that 
in its most ordinary exercises it shall even emulate the clear 
and all-comprehending intellect of the tallest archangel that 
" adores and burns " at the throne of God ! 

But, thirdly, if the moral dignity of this work appears thus 
exalted, in the intellectual elevation of its subject, it is yet 
more so in his improvement as a moral being. I have already 
spoken of the part which moral training ought to hold in a 
scheme of education ; but such is the importance of the 
subject, that I trust a few additional observations will be 
pardoned here ; and the more especially, since, amidst all the 
improvements which have been carried forward, and amidst 
the general prevalence of liberal and enlightened views on 
the subject of education, this feature yet stands almost entirely 
untouched by the hand of reform. The doctrine here set forth 
on this subject, is not an innovation of modern experiment- 
alism. It lies deep in the philosophy of human nature ; and 
accordingly, we find it has been held by every great and 
philosophic mind that has ever been turned towards the 
subject. 

Even Plutarch affirms, that " discretion, virtuous habits, 
and upright living," are the proper and ligitimate end of 



106 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

education : and he boldly charges it to the reproach of his 
countrymen, that while their youth were " carefully instructed 
to read and to dance, to farm and to ride the horse, to pour 
out wine, and to prepare food," yet " the object for which all 
this was done, viz., to live a good and happy life, remained 
untaught, was without the direction of reason and art, and 
left altogether to chance/' Might it not have been expected, 
that this doctrine should have gained some progress during 
the lapse of more than seventeen hundred years ; or, is it an 
austere requisition, that our systems of education shall come 
up to the standard of a Pagan morality ? 

Milton, who wrote in an age of comparative barbarism — an 
age in which his immortal poem, the " Paradise Lost/' sold 
for fifteen pounds, and its author, whatever of him was mortal, 
was suffered to die in obscurity and want — has left the follow- 
ing illustrious record of his opinion, in his letter to Samuel 
Hartlib : "The end of learning is to repair the ruin of our 
first parents, by regaining to know God aright, and out of 
that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him, 
as we may the nearest, by possessing ourselves of true virtue, 
which, united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the 
highest perfection. But because our understanding cannot, 
in this body, found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive 
so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as 
by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the 
same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet 
teaching." 

Lord Karnes, in his " Hints on Education," observes thus : 
" It appears unaccountable, that our teachers generally have 
directed their instructions to the head, with so little attention 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE <>K TEACHERS. 107 

to the heart. From Aristotle down to Locke, books without 
number have been composed, tor cultivating and improving 
the understanding ; few, in proportion, for cultivating and 
improving the affections. Yet surely, as man is intended to 
be more an active than a contemplative being, the education 
of a young man to behave properly in society, is of still 
greater importance than the making of him even a Solomon 
for knowledge." 

Well did this writer except Locke from the general censure 
of having misapprehended the great and principal end of 
education. The views of that great man were such as became 
the father of intellectual philosophy ; and were more than a 
century in advance of the generation to which they were 
addressed. Throughout the whole of his " Thoughts Con- 
cerning Education," he takes it for granted that the cultiva- 
tion of the heart is its paramount object. He utters the same 
complaint which is so loudly echoed in our own day, that 
"Latin and learning make all the noise;" and asserts that 
"the principal business of education is to set the mind right ; 
so that on all occasions it may be disposed to consent to 
nothing but what may be suitable to the dignity and excel- 
lency of a rational creature." 

In another part of the same treatise he observes, " Till you 
can find a school wherein it is possible for the master to look 
after the manners of his scholars, and can show as great 
effects of his care, in forming their minds to virtue, and their 
carriage to good breeding, as in forming their tongues to the 
learned languages, you must confess that you have a strange 
value for words, when, preferring the languages of the ancient 
Greeks and Romans to that which made them such brave 



108 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

men, you think it worth while to hazard your son's innocence 
and virtue, for a little Greek and Latin." 

Again : " I place virtue as the first and most necessary of 
those endowments which belong to a man or a gentleman ; as 
absolutely requisite to make him valued and beloved by 
others, acceptable or tolerable to himself. Without it, I think 
he will be happy neither in this nor the other world." 

The celebrated Dr. Priestly observes, on the same subject, 
that " the very first thing to be inculcated upon a child, as 
soon as he is capable of receiving such impressions, is the 
knowledge of his Maker, and a steady principle of obedience 
to Him ; the idea of his living under the constant inspection 
and government of an invisible Being, who will raise him 
from the dead to an immortal life, and who will reward and 
punish him hereafter, according to his character and actions 
here. I hesitate not, therefore, to assert, on the plainest 
principles, that Religion is the first rational object of education. 
Whatever be the fate of my children, in this transitory world, 
about which I hope I am as solicitous as I ought to be, I 
would, if possible, secure a happy meeting with them in a 
future and everlasting life." 

Such were the sentiments of these illustrious men ; and did 
my limits permit, I might confirm them by quoting those of 
Hartley and of Bacon. Enough, however, has been said, to 
show that the term " new-fangled " — that vague and awkward 
epithet, by which mediocrity seeks to fasten odium upon every 
new trial which philosophy and benevolence make for the 
amelioration of humanity — cannot apply to them. 

But I have said that these views are founded in the philo- 
sophy of human nature. Man is constituted of three classes 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF. TEACHERS. 109 

of faculties: the animal propensities, the moral sentiments. 

and the intellectual powers; and this division exhausts the 
whole of human nature. Of these, the animal propensities 

are l>v far the strongest; yet they are the seat of all vicious 
and criminal practices, and the source of a very great portion 
of human misery. Social and political organization, schemes 
of government and law, are the devices which reason has 
framed, to control their violent and unregulated action ; and 
without which they would soon fill the earth with suffering 
and blood. The intellectual powers, strongly developed by 
education, will aid in holding them under control ; but their 
directly antagonistic principles are the moral .sentiments. It is 
therefore upon these that society must chiefly depend for its 
protection ; and the cultivation of which is the principal 
object to be aimed at, in a scheme of education. 

By way of illustrating our principle, let us suppose the case 
of one not yet hardened in crime, but who revolves darkly in 
his bosom some act of midnight robbery and assassination. 
The animal propensities, such as selfishness, cruelty, cupidity, 
urge him on to the horrid deed. They arc strongly opposed 
by the reflective faculties, whose office it is to show him the 
real nature of the crime which he is about to perpetrate ; its 
alarming consequences, and its true turpitude and dimensions: 
and, if strongly developed by education, they may come in to 
strike the balance right. But the criminal inclination finds 
its principal adversary in the moral sentiments of conscience, 
justice, benevolence, compassion ; which exert all their force, 
native and acquired, to warp him from his purpose. But the 
whole man will move with the temptation toward crime, or 
be drawn with blessed attraction toward virtue 1 , according as 



110 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

the one or the other of these antagonist influences prevails: 
and in all cases, he will move in precisely that direction and 
with that momentum, which he shall acquire as the result of 
the mutual action and counteraction of these several classes of 
faculties. This is not barren speculation. The moral world 
has its laws, as well as the physical ; and the principles which 
govern the mechanical forces are not surer in their operations 
and results than those which sway the action of a human 
being. 

Now the whole object of moral training is, simply, to 
abstract the predominant force from the animal and selfish 
part of human nature, and to fix it on the side of the moral 
sentiments. If it be asked, how the moral sentiments shall be 
strengthened, so as to give them the balance of power in this 
struggle for the empire of the soul, I answer : by the same 
means by which all the other faculties, mental and physical, 
are strengthened ; and that is, by being frequently and intelli- 
gently exercised, on their appropriate^objects. If you would 
call out any sentiment or any faculty in its full vigor, act upon 
it — exercise it. The surest way to make a man a villain, is to 
treat him as one ; appeal to his unworthy motives, to his self- 
ishness, his appetites and his passions, and you will soon form 
for him a low and unworthy character. But if you would 
give him worth and elevation — if you would fill him with 
lofty impulses, and stamp him with a noble and generous 
nature — call often upon his moral sentiments. Let them be 
developed by rewards and encouragements ; and, especially, 
let them be nurtured and exercised, under a pure and watch- 
ful guardianship, in early life. Thus you will give him to 
society, a useful and an active member.; armed by the 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE <»F TEACHERS. Ill 

masculine virtues, for the service of his country and mankind ; 

capacitated by social feelings for pure and generous friendships; 
and softened by virtuous love, for the duties of domestic life. 

And here let me pause, to ask a practical question. Is there 
any distinct and special provision of this sort in our public 
schools, at all adapted to the demands of society and the true 
philosophy of man ? Of what avail is it, that the learned 
Professor, with some text-book in his hand — perhaps of bad 
morals and worse metaphysics — sits before a senior class, at 
college, and gravely reads from his chair a course of dull 
lectures upon Moral Philosophy? It may afford to the young 
men who assemble at his prelections, that sort of elegant enter- 
tainment which Nero loved, who always summoned his philo- 
sophers to wrangle and dispute before him, by way of amusing 
him after dinner, and helping his digestion ; but how feebly 
will it bear against the power, if not of raging passions and 
profligate principles, at least of inbred selfishness, and vicious 
habits, and bad example ! To control and counteract these, 
is, as I trust has been shown, not only the duty, but the great 
and essential function of the office of a teacher ; to rescue the 
young mind from the dominion of evil propensities, and so to 
imbue and magnetize it with the principle of right, that amid 
all the storms which beset the tempestuous voyage of life, it 
shall turn, with steady and unwavering attraction, towards 
Truth and Duty. " To repair the ruin of our first parents," 
is the bold and characteristic language of Milton ; embodying, 
in that single expression of the object of education, more 
profound philosophy than may be found in whole tomes of 
metaphysics. And where shall reason, shall learning, shall 
genius, be challenged to a nobler or worthier work ? Can 



112 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

there be a sublimer employment of the human faculties, than 
the moral elevation of human nature? It was a glorious 
work, and worthy of the Divine ambition, when the Almighty 
spoke out of nothing this globe on which we dwell; and 
ordered it with laws, and gave it to breathe with multitudinous 
life, and sent the stars on their burning and boundless courses, 
and hung out the sun on high. It was yet nobler, when in 
the midst of this creation He placed a being whom He clothed 
with its dominion, and illumined his face with the light of 
reason — a portion of His own intelligence — and gave to that 
reason a boundless progress, and an undying life. But greater 
and far more glorious than all, when He invested that being 
with the attributes of a moral life — conscience, free will, 
accountability; and in its affections and moral faculties, 
stamped it with the lineaments of a likeness to Himself. To 
restore this moral image of God upon the soul of man — to 
repair the ruin and waste which sin has made upon it — to 
redeem it from the thrall of evil passions — to fill it with 
goodness, and purity, and truth — what is this but a new 
creation? And he who undertakes this sublime agency, 
what does he become — I speak it with reverence — but an ally 
and co-laborer with GM ; and that, too, in His noblest work, 
the consummation of creative energy, the great crowning work 
of that glorious creation over which, when it was finished, the 
Infinite Mind rejoiced, and the shouts of angels, and the songs 
of the morning stars rose in the universal concert, the grateful 
and adoring Hymn of Nature ! 

But in the last place, we were to consider the moral great- 
ness of this office, as it appears in the value and magnitude of 
its general results. And here a wider field opens before us, 



A.DDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. L13 

than can even be glanced at on the present occasion. We 
might contemplate these results, as they appear in enlarging 
the empire of science, in the general diffusion of learning, in 
the advancement of the ornamental and useful arts of life ; or 
in their relation to the perpetuation of art and knowledge, to 
the encircling of barbarous nations within the pale of civilized 
humanity, and the general progress of the human species. 
But, passing these fruitful and interesting themes, my con- 
cluding observations will be confined to one single view — the 
moral diffnity which the office of a teacher derives from its 
relation to the perpetuation of civil liberty, and to the political 
interests of our own country. 

If there be any one truth established by the experience of 
mankind, and attested by all the lessons of history, it is, that 
the only hope of governments founded on a popular basis, is in 
popular intelligence and virtue. And here let me digress, to 
observe that virtue and intelligence are allies. I mention this, 
because an idea has been started, in the discussions of the 
Convention, which, if thoroughly examined, must be seen to 
lead to the most monstrous conclusions. It is, that to enrich 
and discipline the intellect only, without a corresponding culti- 
vation of the affections, is to furnish an aliment to depravity, 
and to arm it with all the instruments of evil. I cannot see 
that anything is gained, either to the cause of moral education 
or to the honor of human nature, by thus placing the cultiva- 
tion of the heart and that of the intellect, like mortal adver- 
saries, in conflict with each other. Knowledge ought ever 
to be made the handmaid of morality, for the reason that she 
i- its natural ally, and may be seduced from her allegiance. 
But it should be remembered, that He who gave; man 
s 



114 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

conscience, gave him reason also ; and fixed them as coadjutors^ 
side by side, in the constitution of human nature. They may 
become dissociated, as in the case of Byron ; but it can be 
only by tearing them asunder, contrary to their natural affin- 
ities, and by severing with violent hand the bonds by which 
God himself has bound and interlocked them together. He 
gave reason to be the light and guide of conscience ; and by 
cultivating the intellect, you not only multiply, by a thousand 
fold, the motives to good conduct, but you invigorate the 
moral sense, and set it as a quick and watchful sentinel at the 
heart, and thus act indirectly on the whole moral nature of 
man. It has already been seen that the moral sentiments 
conspire with the intellectual power, to resist temptation and 
to draw men away from crime. To say, therefore, that to 
cultivate the intellect alone is to enlist it on the side of wicked- 
ness, is to turn suicide to human nature. It is to libel the 
moral government of God, 

But to return : We boast it as the distinguishing feature of 
our institutions, that all power lies with the people. This is 
well, while the people are capacitated to use it intelligently 
and wisely ; otherwise, it is but a knife in the hands of a 
maniac. A Republic, in which the great mass of the people, 
who hold the sovereign power, are given up to ignorance and 
degradation, is the grandest treason that can be devised against 
humanity. It is like a volcanic mountain, murmuring with 
internal fires, which rage and swelter in its bosom, but which 
send up to the surface a genial warmth, that covers it with 
perpetual verdure; thus lifting itself in beauty and grandeur 
to the eye, and inviting from afar the humble dwellers of the 
plain, to climb its blooming sides, and fix amidst its loveliness 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. 115 

their treacherous habitations. Poetry has sung the praises of 
"the enlightened few:" but History is a sterner monitor; 
and she warns us, as we value our liberties and our political 
existence; to seek out the amelioration and improvement of the 
many. The French Revolution, of 1793, stands as a solemn 
and terrible example of an experiment toward freedom, con- 
ducted by "the enlightened few," while the great mass of the 
people remained sunk in ignorance and moral debasement. It 
has not been left for us to portray the Reign of Terror. It 
stands out, in dark and awful characters, upon faithful history, 
for a lesson to the latest posterity ; unless posterity shall refuse 
to credit such a tale of depravity and horror, and treat it only 
as an ingenious fable of antiquity. The stage of French 
affairs, throughout the period of the Revolution — what was it 
for twelve years, but a great scaffold, streaming with blood 
and choked up with human heads ? And seated around 
upon it, muffled in black robes and ankle deep in gore, the 
enlightened jew — Condorcet, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, 
Roland, D'Herbois, Brissot, Barrere — presiding as priests 
at the sacrifice, and feasting the sense with the savor of a 
perpetual slaughter ! 

Let us be admonished by the lessons of history. It never 
was in the ordination of Providence or of Nature, that an 
ignorant people should long be a free people. With all the 
forms of freedom, they will become their own tyrants ; and it 
is not to bold to say, that they may even elect a tyrant by 
their own free suffrages, and worship him in his tyranny. It is 
one of the modes in which Providence chastises a degenerate 
people, to give them rulers after their own heart. Augustus 
was praised as a god, while he trampled on the neck of Roman 



116 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

liberty ; and Napoleon, as First Consul, made his triumphal 
entry into Paris, crowned with flowers by the hand of beauty, 
and cheered with the plaudits of admiring thousands. Let 
us then no longer hug the delusion, that in a popular govern- 
ment, which is ever the mirror of the popular mind, imaging 
forth the character as well as the wishes of the people, a free 
constitution, and an impartial representation, are all that is 
necessary for the preservation of liberty. 

I repeat, Virtue and Intelligence are the great pillars on 
which you must rest the fabric of republican institutions. 
But virtue and intelligence are not of spontaneous growth ; 
they are the work of care and culture ; and it is only com- 
petent teachers, themselves educated and set apart for this 
especial purpose, that can be spread as a leaven through- 
out the great mass of society, and thoroughly incorporated 
into the national mind. Hence it follows with a rigorous 
accuracy, that the teachers of our land hold the destinies of 
the nation in their hands. Has this vital and momentous 
truth fallen with its full weight upon the public mind ? Is it 
felt to be the great principle on which the liberties, the happi- 
ness, the very existence of this people depend ? Is it thus 
acted on by those who are the constituted guardians of the 
public weal — by the freemen who crowd the polls, by our 
State Legislatures, our Governors, and our Congress ? Where 
have the candidates for office been required to pledge them- 
selves to the fostering of common schools ; or to vote appropri- 
ations for those infant colleges, which, like the one in this city, 
though they have attracted to themselves learning and abilities 
which might raise them to a glorious pre-eminence, and make 
them blessings to untold thousands of our fellow-countrymen, 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE (>F TEACHERS. 117 

are yet struggling into a feeble existence under the scanty 
support of individual benefactions? About what have been 
our long Congressional debates? What has been the great 
care of legislation, as shown by the public journals ? The 
moneyed corporations of the country; her projects of physical 
improvement, and the operation of a petty, miserable, but 
disastrous and disgraceful war! Millions voted for public 
works, and millions more squandered upon fortifications and 
naval equipments, and the establishment of military posts ! 
And are these the defences which statesmen and legislators 
provide to preserve and perpetuate the liberties of the nation? 
Well may we address them with the language of Hecuba to 
Priam, as she saw the feeble old king about to seize his arms 
for the protection of his empire, while imperial Troy was 
already sacked by Argive foes, and her mighty burning 
reddened all the Egean : 

"NonfoK auxilio nee defensoribus wis 
• Tempus eget." 

Look abroad over this country ; mark her extent, her 
wealth, her fertility, her boundless resources ; the giant 
energies which every day developes, and which she seems 
already bending on that fatal race — tempting, yet always 
fatal to republics — the race for physical greatness and 
aggrandizement. Behold, too, that continuous and mighty 
tide of population, native and foreign, which is forever rush- 
ing through this great Valley towards the setting sun ; sweep- 
ing away the wilderness before it, like grass before the mower; 
waking up industry and civilization in its progress; studding 
the solitary rivers of the West with marts and cities; dotting 
its boundless prairies with human habitations; penetrating 



118 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

every green nook and vale; climbing every fertile ridge ; and 
still gathering and pouring onward, to form new States in 
those vast and yet unpeopled solitudes where the Oregon rolls 
his majestic flood, and " hears no sound save his own dashing." 
Mark all this ; and then say, by what bonds will you hold 
together so mighty a people, and so immense an empire ? 
What safeguard will you give us against the dangers which 
must inevitably grow out of so vast and complicate an organ- 
ization? In the swelling tide of our prosperity, what a field 
will open for political corruption ! What a world of evil 
passions to control, and jarring interests to reconcile ! What 
temptations will there be to luxury and extravagance ! What 
motives to private and official cupidity! What prizes will 
hang glittering at a thousand goals, to dazzle and tempt 
ambition ! Do we expect to find our security against these 
dangers in railroads and canals ? in our circumvallations and 
ships of war ? Alas ! when shall we learn wisdom from the 
lessons of history ? Our most dangerous enemies will grow 
up from our own bosom. We may erect bulwarks against 
foreign invasion ; but what power shall we find in walls and 
armies to protect the people against themselves? There is 
but one sort of " internal improvement," — more thoroughly 
internal than that which is cried up by politicians — that is 
able to save this country; I mean the improvement of the 
minds and souls of her people. If this improvement shall be 
neglected, and shall fail to keep pace with the increase of our 
population and our physical advancement, one of two alterna- 
tives is certain : either the nation must dissolve in anarchy 
under the rulers of its own choice, or, if held together at all, 
it must be by a government so strong and rigorous as to be 



ADDEESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. 11!) 

utterly inconsistent with constitutional liberty. Let the one 
hundred millions which, at no very distant day, will swarm 
our cities, and till up our great interior, remain sunk in ignor- 
ance, and nothing short of an iron despotism will suffice to 
govern the nation ; to reconcile its vast and conflicting 
interests, control its elements of agitation, and hold back its 
fiery and headlong energies from dismemberment and ruin. 

How, then, is this improvement to be effected? Who are 
the agents of it? Who are they who shall stand perpetually 
as priests at the altar of freedom, and feed its sacred fire-, by 
dispensing that knowledge and cultivation on which hangs 
our political salvation? I repeat, they are our teachers ; the 
masters of our schools; the instructors in our acedemies 
and colleges ; and in all those institutions of whatever name, 
which have for their object the intellectual and moral culture 
of our youth, and the diffusion of knowledge among our 
people. Theirs is the moral dignity of stamping the great 
features of our national character; and, in the moral worth 
and intelligence which they give it, to erect a bulwark which 
shall prove impregnable in that hour of trial, when armies 
and fleets and fortifications shall be vain. And when those 
mighty and all-absorbing questions shall be heard, which are 
even now sending their bold demands into the ear of rulers 
and law-givers, which are momently pressing forward to a 
solemn decision in the sight of God and of all nations; and 
which, when the hour of their decision shall come, shall shake 
this country — the Union, the Constitution — as with the 
shaking of an earthquake ; it is they who, in that fearful 
hour, shall gather around the structure of our political organ- 
ization, and with uplifted hands stay the reeling fabric till the 
storm and convulsion be overpast. 



120 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

Nor is it this generation alone, of which they will be the 
guardians and benefactors. The institutions of learning and 
science which they build up and adorn, will stand as beacon- 
lights for future times. Their influence in the formation of 
mind and character will endure to the remotest age. The 
spirit of liberal learning which they foster, is a creative spirit ; 
and it will spread and multiply itself without measure and 
without limit, among the countless millions that shall succeed 
us. This is moral dignity indeed. This it is to be truly 
great. " I shall go down to posterity," said Napoleon, after 
he had bathed his banners in the blood of an hundred battles, 
" with this Code in my hand." That conqueror and tyrant, 
after all his victories, and after rising from the obscurity of a 
Corsican peasant, to become the distributer of the crowns of 
Europe, saw and felt that it was not in his power as an 
Emperor ; not in the glory which he had brought away from 
fields of carnage, but only in his utility as a legislator for 
France, that he could safely trust to redeem him from 
oblivion. He reasoned rightly : and well had it been for 
mankind, if his reason had served him with this conclusion, 
before it had become blinded by a grasping and murderous 
ambition. 

In the moral progress which awaits the human race, the 
characters which make such figure in history will be brought 
to a higher bar ; and posterity will most surely reverse, by one 
consentaneous and irrevocable decision, the judgment which 
the present age has passed upon that grand robber and mur- 
derer of his kind. Nor was Napoleon without some pre- 
monitions of this sternly retributive judgment of posterity. 
Even //csaw, with aching eye, the light of that new moral day 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF TEACHERS. 121 

which should hurst upon the world — a day whose broad and 
ascending sun should wither the laurel on the conqueror's 
brow, and eclipse all the glare of military glory. He foresaw, 
deluded as he was, that a revolution was at hand far greater than 
any which he had wrought out, with his army of mercenary 
millions ; that an era was approachiag, in which there should 
be "a more liberal basis of social things — a higher morality — 
a more wide-spread philanthropy ; " and especially, an era in 
which glory and greatness should be estimated on juster prin- 
ciples ; and be distributed by the universal suffrages of man- 
kind, to those who should be the benefactors, not the destroyers 
of their species. 

It may not be for our teachers to give to the people a code 
of laws ; but it is theirs to give them virtue and intelligence; 
and therewith freedom, without which law-givers are but 
tyrants, and law itself is an oppression. Those who now crowd 
the busy scene of affairs, will soon have passed from the stage; 
and their places will be filled by the men of a new generation. 
It is theirs to mould the character of that generation ; to pre- 
pare it for the high trust which will fall into its keeping ; 
and to preserve in it the spirit and virtue of our illustrious 
ancestors. And, in all the ages to come, it will be theirs to 
perpetuate those social and political institutions, and those 
principles of civil and religious liberty, which render us 
" a peculiar people ; " to stand up, as it were, between the 
living and the dead, and, as the successive generations of men 
advance and disappear from the stage, to pass forward the 
common inheritance, not only unimpaired but enriched with 
fresh accessions for posterity, so long as it shall please a 
gracious Providence to give us a place and a name among 
the nations. 



CHAPTER V. 

HIS LITERARY TASTES AND PRODUCTIONS. 

"if~R. EELLS, though apparently absorbed in the stern 
-^■"- duties which were connected with professional and 
practical life, and pressed by them so that there seemed to 
be no opportunity for other things, ever kept warm and 
bright his interest in purely literary pursuits. Here he 
found his recreation. Upon these beautiful fields would he 
disport himself, when weary of toil on the hot and dusty 
highways of life, and, with harness off and work ended, 
indulge in the verdure and the rest that were most grateful. 
Indeed, the air, the scenes, the exercise, on these fields, were 
all native to him, and from them he gained exhilaration and 
vigor as well as delight. In charming classic style does he 
express his feelings on this subject, in a letter written from 
the midst of his most exhausting legal work, to his friend 
Dr. Kendrick, dated Nov. 12, 1838: "I am right glad to 
know that you continue so high in favor with Apollo, for I 
mean to avail myself of your kind offices in interceding for 
me ; since well I know that it will be entirely from his 
partiality for you, if he condescends to reserve for me any, 



Iirs LITERACY TASTES AND PRODUCTIONS. 123 

even the smallest, niche in his temple. Verily, I have been 
but a sorry worshipper of late; and I shall hold it a matter 
of special grace, if, when he finds me in my wanderings, he do 
not let fly one of his arrows at me, with a more "dreadful 
clangor" than ever yet rung from his Silver Bow. If you see 
any such motion, pray be my go-between, and receive the dart 
on your own broad and impenetrable shield. Moreover, the 
first time you find him in a good humor, his quiver over his 
shoulder and his bow hanging at his side, please venture on 
some explanations to him of my apparent defection. Tell 
him, that if, from the high Empyrean where he sits, he has seen 
my humble altar too often vacant of its incense ; if lie lias 
discovered me kneeling to a strange god — a bastard deity that 
never sat with the immortals on Olympus — it is not the fault 
of my inclination, but of that dire necessity which calls less for 
anger than for pity. u Sic Parctv volant" remind him, is the 
"ultima ratio" among mortals. Tell him that the fatal 
Sisters — those old maids who, despite the gallantry of all 
the gods, have been " withering on the virgin thorn of 
single blessedness" for these thousands of years — have woven a 
skein of black thread into the woof of my destiny. Before he 
visits me, therefore, with too dreadful wrath, he should call 
to account these daughters of Night and Erebus, where they 
sit at their everlasting spindles, and weave the inevitable 
thread of human life. Tell him that I have not forgotten my 
first love; but I am like a fond girl whose sweet and virgin 
affections cling, like the tender rings of the vine, to a tall and 
comely youth, but whose cruel guardian, smit with the love 
of acres, has wedded to some bony and strapping son of the 
soil from the vulgar herd. Tell him, in fine, that though I 



124 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

am a stray sheep from the fold of Admetus, I have been over 
strange mountains, and my bowels do yet yearn for all I have 
left behind ; that even in my dreams I do often find myself 
depasturing, of a sweet summer afternoon, in the green 
herbage of the " Thessalian Tempe," or lying in the shade 
by the waters that do gush in music from the fountain of 
Arethusa. Then, do you not think the god will relent ? If 
he do, if his knotted brow relax but for a moment, if you 
see one beam of kindness, one symptom of compassion, do you 
who have power to prevail, who sit in the sunshine of his 
daily face, follow up your advantage, and give him this my 
prayer : 

" O Thou, born of Jupiter and Latona upon Delos, where 
the shining Cyclades are washed by the Egean wave ; God of 
the Silver Bow, of Poetry and of Medicine, of Music and of 
Augury ; thou who didst slay the Pythian monster, and didst 
avenge the impiety of the children of Xiobe ; who didst aid 
thy uncle Xeptune in building the walls of mighty Troy, 
beguiling the toil of the laborers with thy lyre and songs ; 
and who didst succor thy father Jupiter himself, in his war 
with the direful Titans ! O Magnus Apollo ! I ask not of 
thee gold, which is but dust ; nor beauty, which is a snare ; 
nor pleasure, which is a cheat; nor even life itself, longer 
than it may be had with honor and illustrious well-doing. 
But this, O thou immortal and prepotent divinity, is my 
petition and request. Inasmuch as the inexorable Fates have 
driven me far from my early and favorite haunts, upon a 
thorny and ragged path, unfrequented by the Nine, and 
unblessed by the love of the gods — that thou wouldst, of thy 
benignity, grant that what has been written of me 1 may 



Ills LITERARY TASTES AM) PRODUCTIONS. 1 25 

endure with patience ; and that under thy favoring auspices I 
may noblv accomplish the decrees of Fate. Give me to 
understand Equity and to know Justice; give me to search 
out all the deep and ancient foundations of the Law; give me 
wisdom and ripe judgment ; give me prudence; in action and 
sagacity in council ; give me learning and understanding ; 
give me eloquence and argument j to be a friend to the 
stranger, and an avenger of the injured ; a helper to the needy 
and a shield to the defenceless! Grant that in the fullness of 
time I may bring all these thy gifts to the support of whatever 
is good and worthy, in Society or State ! And finally, when 
these weightier duties are no longer required, and my child- 
hood shall return upon me, from infirmity or age, with it 
return thou its studies and its delights. Then be thou present, 
and bring with thee Mercury and the Muses, the Graces, and 
the dancing Hours ! Stand ye all around me, when T pre- 
pare my later votive offerings, and rekindle your fires on the 
cold and long-forsaken altars of my youth ! " 

There is in the desires which have this expression a clear 
perception of what would be demanded by the profession he 
had chosen; and a resolution that to the full this demand 
should* be answered. Yet back of this, as if unwilling to be 
ignored, though crowded into a subordinate place, the genuine 
love for literature which he would not wholly repress. He 
delighted to drink of the Pierian spring, and would not be 
denied the privilege. He exulted in the pleasure of occasional 
excursions over the wide domain of classic lore. He left 
volumes of fugitive pieces, and more elaborate articles, with 
which he had refreshed himself in the brief intervals allowed 
by increasing business. He gladly accepted Invitations to 



126 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

deliver public addresses upon general themes, when these 
would not interfere too seriously with the engagements of his 
office. And in all these writings sparkle the pure taste for 
Avhich he was distinguished ; while there is scarcely a piece, 
even the most off-hand and unstudied, that is not fragrant 
with the spirit of devotion to some worthy end that rendered 
his whole life a blessing. It is not appropriate to a volume 
like this that such contributions should swell its pages, and 
therefore none of them will be introduced ; yet it is against 
the earnest wishes of some warm and perhapsjpartial friends, 
that they are excluded. 

There is one poetical production, however, which has been 
printed — though, as will be seen from the introductory note, 
not designed to be published — that really claims a place in 
this Memorial. It is the only specimen of his composition 
that is given ; indeed Mr. Eells, as he tells us, did not regard 
himself as possessing the poetic faculty. Yet it has such 
merit, and withal so abounds in sentiments which reveal his 
heart, that it has been thought none of those for whom the 
book is specially prepared will feel that it should have been 
denied a place here, notwithstanding the substance of the 
poem relates ouly to personal and family affliction. His 
brother Henry, next older than himself, had always been 
sacredly dear to him ; and when news of his death by drown- 
ing came to him, the shock was terrible. He writes respecting 
it: " I was in the Court Room, when an old negro waiter 
handed me the letter, with a black seal ! I opened it, and 
read the first line, when I dropped the letters, docket, papers, 
everything I had, upon the table, and rushed out of the house 
to my own room, which I have not since left. The world 



HIS LITERARY TASTES AND PRODUCTIONS. 127 

seems blank to me! What a transient tiling is life! It floats 
before me like a phantom, ready to be blown away by the first 
breath! I try to compose the troubled ocean of my sorrow 
with the reflections of religion, and become somewhat calm j 
when again my loss rushes upon me! Poor, dear brother! 
So mild, so kind, so faithful, so forbearing, so magnanimous, 
of such devotion and generosity, such simplicity of manners, 
such purity of life, such elevation of moral and intellectual 
character, such perfect nobleness of mind and heart ! He has 
been more than a brother to me. Our mutual love and con- 
fidence were uninterrupted. We had no secrets between us. 
All our. plans and hopes were open to each other as the light. 
Our sentiments on all subjects were interchanged with such 
freedom that nothing w T as too delicate or too sacred for the ear 
of fraternal trust. What pleasure did we anticipate in each 
other's society, through many long and happy years, as co- 
partners in each other's fortunes, whether of trial and difficulty 
or of usefulness and honor. How is all dashed forever ! 
What a commentary on the folly of all hopes which are not 
built on surer foundations than the inconstant and treacherous 
elements of this vain and fleeting scene ! " 

These exclamations make known in some degree the grief 
that overwhelmed him, and will serve to give all the explana- 
tion necessary, as the Poem is read. The further facts are 
made known in the note which he has placed as a preface. 



Eev. James Henry Eells, the subject of the following humble 
tribute, was drowned in the Maumee Eiver, opposite Perrysburg, in 
attempting to cross on the ice, on the evening of the 7th of December, 
1836, at the age of twenty-seven. In the freshness of his early prime, in 
the full enjoyment of perfect health, and in the midst of his useful and 
honorable years, he was cut off in a moment, and summoned to his last 
account. Gladly would I here sum up the character of one whose learning, 
talents, and accomplishments, and whose warm and noble heart, purified 
by the grace of Christ, rendered him universally respected and beloved ; 
but those who knew him will never cease to remember what he was, and to 
those who did not, a faithful delineation of his character would seem but 
the extravagant panegyric of a partial and blind affection. 

It need scarcely be added, that the following piece was not designed 
for the eye of criticism, nor is the printing of the few copies of it which 
are struck off intended as a publication. It was written mostly during a 
season of severe sickness ; and though composed in verse, it lays no claim 
to poetical merit. Poetry is not my gift ; and my vocation is one which 
has never been celebrated for its fellowship with the Muses. A piece, 
however, may derive interest from the subject matter of it ; and from those 
who were personally acquainted with the deceased, and for whom alone 
these lines are intended, anything which may serve to recall his image — 
to cherish the memory of his talents and his virtues, of his devotion to the 
cause of his Master, and the bright example of his pure and consistent 
life — cannot fail to meet with an indulgent reception. 

Cincinnati , October 30, 1840. S. E. 



TRIBUTE TO HIS BROTH KR. 



" Refore me there 
He, the Departed, stood ! aye, face to face — 
So near, and yet how far! — his form, his mien, 
Gave to remembrance back each burning trace 
Within." 

" He who counts alone 
The beatings of the solitary heart — 
That Beinsr knows how I have loved thee ever." 



Midnight so soon ! Hark ! ' Tis the City clock, 
That numbers slowly o'er its fullest stroke, 
And tolls the hour. How solemn are these sounds ! 
They are the measures of departing Time, 
That beat his grand funereal march, and fall 
Upon the ear like voices from the dead, 
Strange echoes waking in the human breast. 

I will throw back the casement, and will woo 
The bland air of this soft and summer night 
To my flushed brow. What holy solitude! 
How wide the vacant streets! These dingy walls, 
That lately rang with tramp of myriad feet, 
And ponderous wheels — how high and still they stand 



130 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

Upon their giant shadows ! Not a sound, 

Save the lone watchman's distant footfall, breaks 

The silence dread. Even the festal lamps, 

Whose pendent prisms through half the livelong night 

Shook to the merry viol, and the feet 

Of youthful dancers, where light-hearted Mirth, 

And Beauty, with the rosy-footed Hours, 

Held jocund festival, have ceased to burn. 

The latest guest has bade the hall Good-night ! 

And sought his home. Locked in profound repose, 

The City sleeps. Her mighty heart is still. 

Sweet is the universal rest, and Peace, 

Like a kind angel, broodeth over all. 

Midnight, I love thee ! Whether thou spread'st above 

Thy kindling heavens, and thy cool dews descend, 

Mixt with the soft light of the virgin moon, 

Or tempests blacken on thy awful front, 

Pregnant with lightnings, and with whirlwinds dire, 

I love thee still : in all thy changeful moods, 

Or fierce or mild. A Power invisible 

Doth ever walk thy wide and shadowy realm, 

Whose sceptered touch is magic to the soul ; 

Moulds it anew ; arms it with angel strength ; 

Stirs it with heavenly visions, and the hope 

Of glory, and the taste of endless joy ; 

Gives it grand converse with the mighty dead ; 

The awful mystery of Life reveals — 

The life that now is, and the life to come. 

Beneath the gairish day we learn the world, 



TRIBUTE TO HIS BROTHER. 131 

And how to treat with all its busy cares : 

But this wide silence, and these dewy hours, 

Are the soul's teaehcrs; legates sent from Heaven, 

To give it grand revealings — lessons high 

Of Life and Death, Eternity and Time; 

To tune its grateful voiee to sweet accord 

With seraph songs, and notes of heavenly harps, 

And wondrous symphonies that stir through all 

The glorious universe, and whisper praise 

And worship in the Eternal ear. 

And now — 
Adieu ! this feverish vigil, and these tomes 
Of learned lore ! This thought-perplexing mass 
Of briefs and parchments, lie ye undisturbed 
Until the dawn. And all ye earth-born thoughts, 
And anxious schemes of this our little life; 
Ye raven Cares that flap the incessant wing, 
And stretch your hated shadows o'er the soul — 
A motley brood — I beckon ye away. 
And all ye airy flattering hopes — ye dreams 
Of young Ambition that in glory loom, 
And in life's dim perspective tempt the heavens, 
Like distant mountains, reared against the sky, 
Whose golden tops burn in the evening sun, 
Begone! These hours, snatched from consuming toil, 
And, Night ! baptized by thee in holy dews, 
I dedicate to sacred thoughts. Full oft, 
At this auspicious time, \ wander forth 
To gaze on Nature's varied loveliness: 



132 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

The terraced gardens, and suburban shades, 
This beauteous river, and the circling hills, 
With brooks and paths and winding glens between, 
The far-off purple woods, and, stretched above, 
Yon boundless heaven with all its starry fires ; 
To stand within this temple of the sky, 
And worship Nature at her thousand shrines ; 
To feel her touch divine, and, kneeling, drink 
The deep abundant river of her joy. 

But neither vales, nor shades, nor purple woods, 
Nor the still gardens, nor thy glorious hills, 
Ohio ! nor thy bright and crystal flood, 
Nor yet yon radiant concave of the sky_, 
Sprinkled by God's own hand with stars and suns, 
Command me now. From all this nightly pomp 
Steals my fond thought to spiritual realms ; 
And him, a dweller bright beyond the spheres, 
Shrined in my inmost soul. 

Oh, sainted One ! 
Who mak'st beyond those everlasting lamps 
That light the sky thy brighter home, I give 
These hours to Memory and to thee. Redeemed, 
Immortal though thou art, and standing up 
In thy high place among the sons of God, 
My heart yearns fondly for thy love, and longs 
To pour toward thee, the full unwasted tide 
Of its affections. Hither bend thy wing, 
Pure Spirit ! I would feel thy presence now. 



TRIBUTE TO Ills BROTHER. 133 

Impatient of its clay, mv spirit spurns 

The earth, and now in this glad hour, would strike 

Its fetters off, and mount with thee. Oh, come ! 

Attend me in this solemn-thoughted hour; 

List to the throbbingsof this bursting heart, 

And grant this once thy Spirit's sweet commune: — 

A boon which my soul covets far beyond 

The dower of princes, or their bauble crowns. 

Wilt thou reject the offering? Dost scorn 

The humble tribute of a brother's love ? — 

This votive hour, these longings of the soul, 

These suppliant hands that would embrace again 

Thy form, as erst they did in life's sweet morn, — 

Our pure and sunny childhood, when no cloud 

Crossed our bright heaven, when hope and love were young 

Within our hearts, which oft and fondly met, 

And throbbed together in tumultuous joy ? 

And have these memories faded ? Hast forgot, 

Mid angel friendships, and the joys above, 

Thy dearest, earliest friend ? Hath the pure light 

Of those celestial realms ethereal ized 

Thy lofty being, and refined it so, 

That sympathy with earth and earthly things 

Would stain its nature of diviner mould? 

That it may feel no fleshly ties, no sense 

Of kindred, and no touch of human love? 

Hath it aught less of tenderness and truth, 

Since it hath dwelt within the smile of God, 

And shared the blest affinities of Heaven? 



134 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

Hark ! A low murmer steals along the air, 
Like the soft rustling of an angel's wing. 
The agitated ether fans my cheek, 
Shed with celestial odours. Hark, again ! 
Aloft are voices of attendant Ones, 
In quick and changeful measures mingling soft, 
Concordant with the touch of pipes and harps, 
And melodies retreating. 'Tis enough ! 
Thy faithful spirit witnesseth with mine. 
A sensible Presence fills the conscious air. 
My prayer is heard on high, and — thou art here. 

But here delay we not. These populous walls, 
These streets, where daily pours the living tide, 
Familiar with the sounds of art and trade, 
And babbling voices of contentious men, 
Our sacred interview but ill befit. 

On earth, thou Nature lovedst, in all her forms 
Sublime, or beautiful : — the golden Sun, 
With all his radiant sisterhood of stars ; 
The great green sea, heaving eternally ; 
Heaven's blue and bending dome ; and the glad change 
Of Seasons, children of the rolling year ; 
Morning and evening ; mountain, cloud, and storm. 
The spirits of the peopled universe, 
To thy purged eye, had clear and palpable forms ; 
And thou didst love them, and didst dwell with them 
Familiarly, as with thy kind. 



TRIBUTE TO HIS BROTHER. L35 

Beyond 
The City's precincts, is a hallowed spot ; 
Which, hadsi thou still thy mortal mantle on, 
Would touch thy spirit with a holy joy. 
Thou seest this amphitheatre of hills, 
Which, like a rampart, gird the city round. 
Its giant shade we enter even now ; 
And still the slope ascending, gentle airs, 
That nightly wandering have kissed the dews 
From many a forest, and in fields afar 
Held dalliance with a thousand odorous shrubs, 
And summer blossoms, greet the expectant sense. 
Yonder the place we seek. A sweet lone dell, 
Deep in the bosom of the embracing hills, 
Which wall it in on every side, save where 
It spreads with soft expansion to the plain, 
Giving the glimpse of spires and distant dome, 
And the bright winding river, and, beyond, 
Of cultured fields, and beautiful blue vales, 
And forests vast and dim that crown the hills. 
On either side of this wild sheltered glen, 
That never echoed to the sounding axe, 
The primal forest stands. Across the chasm 
The patriarchal trees do interlock 
Their friendly arms, and weave a verdant roof 
Fleckered with stars and sky. Its narrow bed 
A crystal brook divides. Flags fringe the banks, 
And nameless plants, whose tall and bending stems 
Dip their obedient blossoms in the wave. 
Which, as it glides along its slaty floor, 



136 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL, EELLS. 

Or with short, quick fall drops from stair to stair 
Of polished stone, responds in liquid song 
To the deep cadence of the woods around. 
These are sweet Nature's voices. Other sounds 
Have never vexed these tranquil shades, since here 
The painted Indian lurked, and on these heights 
Kindled his watchfires, or with stealthy step 
Stole on his game. No trace of man is here, 
Or sign of life, save when on rushing wing, 
Some weary bird, scared by the hunter's gun, 
Or flying from the heats of sultry noon, 
Descends into these depths o/ shade, and sits 
Smoothing his plumes, and ever and anon 
Pours his melodious notes on the clear air. 
Nature reigns here : and when the breeze is down, 
A deep and holy hush seems circumfused, 
As if a Spirit tenanted the glen. 

Needless these ineffectual words : for lo ! 
Here at our feet the bosky valley spreads. 
Welcome, sweet dell ! Welcome your grassy seats, 
Your thickets brown, and rocks, and woods, and flowers ! 
Stooping once more along the accustomed path, 
Beneath this bushy canopy, I come 
To pay my nightly worship at your shrine, 
And softly tread your sacred shades again. 
Even as the loves of kindred and of friends, 
Each tree, each flower, each trunk, and mossy knoll, 
Hath a familiar beinc;. Ye are linked 
With blessed memories, sweet, holy thoughts, 



TRIBUTE TO His BROTHER. 1 •">" 

Strange musings that could never come to words, 

But which have mademy bosom beat, and burn 

As with a Seraph's fire. Oh ! J have gazed 

On your inanimate forms, — fancy the while 

Intensely busy in a world of dreams, — 

Til] ye have seemed to hold a kindred lite ; 

A mystic sympathy with human hearts; 

And while I gazed, your spiritual forms 

Grew to my being as a second self. 

Friendship — how rare on earth ! Vet ye are friends : 

Mute faithful friends ; for ye have shared my heart ; — 

It* hopes and fears, its fancies strange and wild, 

Its secret .joys, and its unspoken griefs, 

The sigh, the vow, the tear, the whispered prayer, 

Those inarticulate musings when the soul, 

Feeling the disproportion vast between 

All she can reach on earth, and her keen wants, 

Struggles against her prison-bars, and pants 

For infinite things, and longs to fill her powers 

With nobler action, and sublimer life. 

Such life is thine, — my Brother. Here, beneath 
These holy stars, while yet the lingering Night 
Wraps her dark mantle o'er a drowsy world, — 
Here, with no witness but the all-seeing God, 
Here, where no living voice is heard, no sound 
Invade-, save from these overhanging woods, 
Whose tops wave in the night-wind and reveal 
The bright-eyed sky, or from the softer brook 
Which purls and babbles like a child at play, — 



138 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

Teach me somewhat of that diviner life, 
And tell the mysteries of the World Unseen. 

Oh, sav ! since that dark, dreary, wintry night, 

When from the watery depths of cold Manmee, 

Thy eagle spirit cleft the sky, and soared 

Up to the gates of Light, what hast thon seen, 

And felt and heard ? What high commissions had, 

Sealed with the signet of the King of kings ? 

What errands hast performed to worlds afar? 

What wondrous deeds, what journeyings Avide and vast, 

Since thon hast had the freedom of the skies ? 

Hast thou as with the bold and lightning step 

Of an Archangel trod from sphere to sphere, 

And made the circuit of the universe, 

Along that mighty shoal of suns which belts 

The encircling Ocean of unbounded space, 

And still pursued thy exploring flight, till thou 

Hast learned the whole geography of Heaven, 

And reached Creation's bound, and overlooked 

The wall into black chaos, — utter void, 

Depths which no line has sounded, and no ray 

Of morning pierced, nor seraph's starry eye — 

Where is nor thought, nor substance, sight nor sound, 

Where nought of real is, except the still 

And Awful Presence of the resting God ? . 

On earth, what men call Science, shared thy love. 
Thy eager eye did range the universe 
In quest of Truth and Knowledge. Now it found 



TRIBUTE TO SIS BROTHER. L39 

A world of wonders in a blade of grass: 
Now asked its gentle secret from the flower ; 

Xow sealed the skies, and learned their lore sublime. 

To thee all nature spoke with thousand tongues ; 

Ocean, and Earth, and Air, and all their tribes 

Of myriad life: mountains, and trees, and brooks, 

And morning clouds ; zephyr and tempest ; all 

Spoke to thy spirit with a living Voice, 

And thou didst gather wisdom from them all. 

But chief the wonders of the midnight sky 

Shared thy admiring gaze, as speaking most 

The glory and the majesty of Him, 

Who formed, sustains, and guides, and rules the whole. 

Still hangs the chart upon my study wall, 
With curious calculations covered o'er, 
Cycle and epicycle, plot and line, 
Described by thine own hand with studious care, 
On which in many an hour of midnight toil, 
Thou didst forecast the movements of the sky, — 
The planets' times, their revolutions vast, 
Transit and node, conjunction and eclipse. 
This, men call SCIENCE — but what sayest THOU, 
Since, with an eye purged from these mortal films, 
Thou hast surveyed the whole stupendous frame 
Of visible Nature : all her realms explored; 
Weighed every force, and measured every line, 
And traced the circles vast of every orb 
That shines, or darkly Moats ; and Learned the laws 
Of all material things : — how the leaf grows: 



140 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

How rise the juices from the solid earth, 
To clothe it o'er with forests, or to form 
In fruits and flowers : — -hast seen the essences 
Of things ; what matter and what spirit is ; 
What is effect, and cause ; and what the chain 
That links them each to each, throughout the vast 
Of being; and then, returning to the goal, — 
Him great first Cause, author of all effects, 
Stood in His presence with adoring eye, 
And at His footstool cast thy golden crown ? 

He is the All in All :— Centre of Light, 
And Life, and Love. Minute and vast are all 
Alike to Him. Omnipotence discerns 
• Nor great nor small. His hand with equal ease, 
Or paints the lily and the insect's wing, 
Or rolls the tides, and balances the spheres. 

Hast thou ne'er witnessed His creative power 
Prompted by love ? Hast never seen thy God, 
When, prodigal of glory, He hath called 
Up from the dreary nought, world after world, 
Moulded them o'er, and from His red right hand 
Flung them abroad on their eternal rounds, 
And lighted up the realms of ancient Night 
Millions of leagues afar, and peopled all 
With joyous life ; then resting from His work, 
With infinite complacency the whole 
Surveyed, and called it " Very Good?" 



TRIBUTE TO HIS BROTHER. 141 

Say, then, 
IIa>t thou not marked the ages of the stars, 
And learned the epochs of things done in Heaven? 
Of mortal deeds men have their histories, 
And monuments: embalm with infinite pains 
The memory of events, that future times 
May have a full account of tilings that were. 
Say ! hath not Heaven its history too? Js kept 
No record there ? that spirits later born, 
And souls redeemed, may know what things have passed 
On high ? Doth not some mighty Chronicler, — 
Some tall First-born of the angelic host, 
Standing forever up at God's right hand, 
AYith glory-smitten brow, and eye that burns 
Eternally like the sun, and aye explores 
Those wide and glorious realms, take note of all 
His goings forth from everlasting? Mark 
His counsels, plans, and their fulfillment vast, — 
Each new-created orb, that, clad in light, 
Rolls from His hand ; each angel's birth and name, 
And all their deeds, and every coming up 
Of raptured saint to take his golden crown; 
And with a pen of braided lightnings, give 
To everlasting Record each and all ? 
Say ! hast ne'er found that History divine, 
There where it lies outspread before the Throne, 
Volume immense ! and ever gleams and burns 
With the reflected glories of a God? 
And hast thou not as with an angel's strength, 
Heaved o'er its leaves of massy gold, and learned, 



142 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

The vast and mighty cipher which enlocks 
The wisdom of the skies ? Hast ne'er explored 
The page which tells the primal birth of aught 
Created ; when, at the life-giving Word, 
The first of all the sons of God that saw 
His Maker's face, before Him stood in light 
And highest glory, — or, when the first globe 
Rolled on its glowing axle through the depths 
Profound ; or, farther on, the eventful page 
Which tells the war with rebel hosts, — what deeds 
The heroes of the faithful did that day ; 
Gabriel, and Michael, and their valiant ones : 
And how the traitor-legions, with their Chief 
Defeated, turned and fled ; and still pursued, 
Rushed headlong to the horrid gulf; and peace 
Was had again in Heaven ? 

But oh ! one leaf 
I know thou hast discerned, and o'er it bent 
In wonder oft, and gratitude, and love. 
'Tis that which tells the tale of mortal sin — 
Man made upright, and given his happy seat 
In one fair planet that obeyed the sun ; 
There tempted, fallen ; but yet again restored ; 
Redeemed by blood, and made the heir of Heaven. 
Wonder of wonders ! Condescension vast 
Of infinite Love ! That the eternal Son 
Should lay his glories by, and dwell in flesh, 
And bow his head in death upon the cross, 
That man might live ! 



TRIBUTE TO His BROTHER. 1 [3 

Go I) M A N I r EST I N F I , I -:s 1 1 ! 
r riiis is the mystery of mysteries. 
" Herein is love." Too short eternity 
Will be to comprehend the height, the depth, 
The length, and breadth of the amazing plan. 

But from the exploring of these wonders vast, 
What services engage thine active powers? 
Hast thou not wrought in worlds that shine afar, 
Or, on this earthly ball, where once thy home 
Thou hadst, the agencies of Him who makes 
His angels spirits, and his ministers 
A flame of fire, and through his empire vast 
Commands them forth to do His various will ? 
Oh ! once I saw, or thought I saw, a form 
Resembling thine, doing a work divine 
Upon the sky ; and ever since, as oft 
As I recall the vision to my mind, . 
Unlike a dream that fades with years, it grows 
More and more real upon each review. 

It was a summer eve. A copious shower 
Had cooled the sultry air. The golden sun 
Was sinking to the West ; but still the storm 
Hung in the Orient. I dropped my toil, 
To walk abroad and taste the new-born life. 
The air was soft and calm : gardens, and woods, 
And fields, breathed balmy odours. Beast and bird, 
The insect race, and even the reptile world 
Came forth rejoicing. With a brighter hue 



3 44 MEMORIAL OP SAMUEL EELLS. 

The emerald meadows shone : each drooping stalk 

Revived, each gentle flower lifted its head, 

And smiled. Oh! 'twas a blessed hour: and while 

I tasted it, I felt my heart grow soft 

Within me : and my spirit seemed to live 

A younger and a holier life. It lived 

Among the joys of other days, — the scenes 

Of early childhood, and the names of friends — 

The loved, the left, the absent, and the dead. 

While thus I mused — Behold upon the cloud 
The Bow of promise ! Then I thought of thee : 
How we had lived, and loved in early days ; 
Straying by brooks or through the pastures green, 
To revel on the charms of earth and sky, 
What time the stars came forth, and the young moon 
Bent in the still blue heaven her silver horn ; 
Or gathering clouds, all fringed with red and gold, 
Marshalled in glory round the coming sun : 
And how, together, we had often gazed 
On such a scene : from our dear garden walks, 
Or from the old paternal door, admired 
That beauteous arch, and marked each melting hue. 

But now I gazed alone : and while I gazed, 
A form stood half-revealed amid the cloud. 
An instant more, and a familiar face 
Appeared ; but quick as thought the humid veil 
Closed it around. A moment there it hung, 
And trembled ; then, like a thin rolling mist, 



TRIBUTE TO His BROTHER. 145 

Descended slow along the painted arch, 

And as it sunk, gathered its colors up, 

And softly rose and mingled with the cloud. 

Still there I stood, and clasped my hands, and gazed : 

And I was even as a little child : 

Fluttering my heart with wonder, love, and joy. 

I looked again. The cloud had passed away, 

And not a floating vapour left behind. 

Blue sky and the soft evening stars were there : — 

No more ! — I dropped upon my knees, and prayed. 

Let me be bold, and put a question now. 
Whose face was that I saw ? Wast thou not sent 
On that sweet evening errand ? Through realms immense 
Of glowing worlds, and countless as the sands, 
To bend thy night toward thy native ball, 
And, carrying 'neath thy wing a precious urn, 
Filled with the fount of Everlasting Light, 
To paint His bow upon the storm who made 
The gracious promise to the sons of men ; 
And when thev had seen anew the living sign 
Pencilled on high, to bring its glories home? 

On earth, thou wast the ambassador of God. 
Charged with the embassy of love, thou stoodst 
Before His altars, and its holy fruits, 
Which ever dropped as from the Tree of Life, 
Proved thy commission. Scepticism heard, 
And straight Hung up his darkling doubt, and (-aught 
On hopes immortal. Down the cheek of Vice, 

10 



146 .MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

And Profligacy, rolled repentant tears. 
Despondence raised his weary head, his eye 
Brightening the while, and as thy silver tones, 
That breathed the story of a Saviour's love, 
Melted in music on his captive ear, 
Clapped his glad hands in blest unmeasured joy. 
The iron brow of veteran Wickedness 
Relaxed, then beamed again with holy love. 
The scoffer listened, trembled, — then rejoiced. 
Strange fearfulness the hypocrite surprised ; 
And holy men woke to a holier life. 
" 'Tis good that we are here ;" all hearts exclaimed 
" This is none other than the house of God ; 
This is the gate of Heaven !" 

Yet not alone 
The sacred mission occupied thy care. 
Thy sacerdotal robes thou well didst keep 
Unspotted from the world, and yet the poor, 
The widow, and the fatherless, those whom 
None else befriended, found a friend in thee. 
The drear abodes of Sorrow and of Want 
Blessed thy exploring footsteps. Thy kind eye 
Melted in pity for the mourner's grief. 
Woe raised her pallid face to meet thy smile, 
And in its sunshine, all her tears exhaled : 
And starveling Penury kissed thy liberal hand, 
And gave thee back — oh, priceless recompense ! — 
The benediction of the grateful poor. 



TRIBUTE TO HIS BROTHER. 147 

Do not like ministries engage thee still ? 
Angels and souls redeemed from mortal thrall. 
Are they not ministering spirits, sent 
To minister to them who shall be heirs 
Of Life? Those dear departed ones — our friends 
And kindred, who, while yet on earth, partook 
Our joys and griefs, our struggles and our toils, 
Do they not love us still ; and night and day, 
Hovering about in the invisible air, 
Keep holy watch above us, guard our way 
Through life's dark maze, and with sweet influence draw 
Us upward in our progress to the skies ? 
Oh, say ! when that last bubbling prayer closed up 
Thy desperate struggle with the ice and waves, 
Did not celestial Ones wait round the spot, 
To catch thee up, and on impatient wing, 
Bear thy freed spirit to the blest abodes ? 
And there arrived, did not the sainted form 
Of her who gave thee life, — immortal youth 
Upon her brow, her radiant face wreathed o'er 
With welcoming smiles, — stand at the starry gates, 
Which from her hasty hand flew swift and wide, 
To give thee entrance ? And thy Fathers too — 
That long ancestral line of holy men, (*) 



-Colonel Samuel Eells, a British officer, came to America from England in the latter 
part ol the 17th century, and was the progenitor of ;ill persons in this country by the 
name of Eells. 

His sou. Rev. Nathaniel EellS, Was graduated at Harvard University, in 1696, and 
was settled as a Clergyman »ver the Presbyterian Church in Scituate, Mass. 

His son, Rev. Nathaniel Eells, Jun., was graduated at Harvard University, in 1728. 
and was settled as a Clergyman over the Presbyterian Church in Stonington, Conn., 
where he died in the W I year of his ministry, and the 70th year of hie age. 



148 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

Who broke to starving souls the Bread of Life, — 
Didst thou not mark their tall and reverend forms, 
Standing in order round about the Throne, 
Clad in white robes, and bearing in their hands 
Great golden harps, and boughs of living palm ? 
Did they not from their seats of glory bend 
To greet the coming up of their new guest ? 
Embrace with joy their son, latest arrived, 
Give thee thy harp and crown, and lead thee up 
To thy fair seat among the Sons of Light ? 

Oh ! if such aids to mortals here be given, 

Impart thine own ; for much my spirit needs 

Thy ministry of love. This world, alas! 

Is not the world I saw in my young dreams; 

Its pictured joys, its fond and fairy scenes 

Of pleasure and of hope, its visions bright 

Of Love and Fame, that starred the cloudless sky 

Of early childhood, and that made my life 

One long gay dream of sweet expectancy, 

Where are thev now*? Gone like bright morning clouds, 



His son, Rev. Edward Eells, was also graduated at Harvard University, and succeed- 
ed his father in the ministry at Stonington. 

His son, Rev. James Eells, was graduated at Yale College in 1703, and was settled as a 
Clergyman over the Presbyterian Church in Glastenbury, Conn. 

His son, Rev. James Eells, Jun., was graduated at Yale College, in 1799, and was 
settled as a Clergyman over the Presbyterian Church in Westmoreland, Oneida Co., N. 
Y., in 1804, where he continued till 1830, and then removed to Ohio. 

His son, Rev. James Henry Eells, was graduated at Hamilton College, N. Y , in 
182S, and was first settled as a Clergyman over the Presbyterian Church in Elyria, 
Lorain County, Ohio, and afterwards settled at Perrysburg, Ohio, where he was 
drowned December 7, 1836. He was the sixth educated Presbyterian Clergyman 
in the direct ancestral line : and has left one son, Samuel Henry, now about four years 
of age. 



TRIBUTE TO HIS BROTHER. 141) 

Or like sweet garden flowers which frost and storm 
Have blighted to the root and borne a way, 
Withered and crisp upon the wintry winds. 
My hopes are dead. My joys are in the dust. 
My early friends sleep in their scattered graves. 
In youthful fervors spent my spirit flags, 
And all its bold aspirings are no more. 
That young Ambition which would once have dared 
To climb with eagle flight the blackest sky, 
And bathe its wing in tempests, — that aspired 
To mix among those glittering forms who won 
The heights of everlasting Fame, and there 
Walk like the gods upon the mountain tops, 
Is quenched and dead. 

One star in life's young morn, 
One beautiful bright star rose on my soul, 
And filled my being with a blessed light. 
But while with fond idolatry I gazed 
Upon that radiant orb, and my young heart, 
Paupering itself like any prodigal, 
Poured all its golden treasures out, dark clouds 
Rose round it, and I saw it set at last 
In funeral glooms: and darkness like a pall 
Hath shrouded all it shone upon. And now 
My desolate heart mourns its quick-perished hopes ; 
And in the tide of joy that pours around, 
Refuses to be glad. My very life 

Hangs wearily and I could wish but no ! 

I check that bold and wicked thought. 'Tis true 



150 . MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

I am no longer what I was ; but yet 

I am what Heaven designed me, and I bow 

In sweet submission to its blessed will. 

Why thus cast down, then, art thou, O my soul ? 

Why art thou thus disquieted within ? 

There is a world whose joys shall never fade ; 

Whose orb of light shall never set ; a world 

Where neither sin, nor death, nor pain, nor change, 

Shall ever come : whose everlasting names, 

Graven in light upon the throne of God, 

And shining there eternally, shall mock 

This miserable cheat that men call Fame ; 

A world where tears are wiped from every eye ; 

Where friends shall meet to part no more ; where all 

That we have loved of beautiful and pure, 

And more than ever dwelt in human dreams, 

Gathered at last unto its blissful home, 

Shall be our own forever. 

Henceforth now 
I trample earthly joys beneath my feet, 
And fix my hopes on high. Why should I cling 
To this dark pilgrimage of life, or give 
This deathless spirit to the things of Time ? 
All human joys, all sublunary pomp, 
Beauty, and Wealth, and Fame, and titled Power, 
Are but the heritage of Death. The Earth 
Is but one mighty sepulchre. One sound 
She sends for ever up — the solemn tread 
Of generations marching to the grave. 



TKIBUTE TO HIS BROTHER. L51 

Death heads this vast procession of our race, 

And from its myriad millions, — who shall miss 

My dropping off, or note the number less '.' 

What is this little life I rateso high, 

To the great mass of being? 'Twill expire, 

ks tadcs a leaf in some lone wood ? as breaks 

The frailest bubble on the Ocean's breast, 

When rocked with storms : or as a spark is quenched 

In some wide conflagration. Oh ! T feel 

That this is not my home. A few short days — 

And I shall close my eyes upon the sun, 

And the bright garniture of earth and skv ; 

And all this world shall hold of me, will be 

But one small handful of forgotten dust. 

But oh, the immortal part ! This spark divine 

That burns within, and shall outbura the stars ! 

Eternal God ! God of my life ! to Thee 

T give that better part. Its hopes and fears, 

The spectral doubts that haunt its twilight glooms, 

And give it strange unrest, — its longings high. 

tts aspirations for a better life, 

Its weakness and its wants, — Thou knowest all ; 

And Thou alone canst fill its vast desires. 

From Thee I had my being : unto Thee 

I consecrate it back with all its powers. 

Henceforth be thou my Comforter and Guide; 

My Light, my Life, my Portion and my All ! 

But Io ! the early mists ascend the hills, 

And the flushed steeples greet the purple dawn ! 



152 MEMORIAL OF SAMTJE EELLS. 

Thus shall the final Morning break. Yet not 

As this, to rend our souls with fond adieus. 

This calls me to my toil, that to my rest. 

This dawn divides us : that shall join our hands 

And hearts forever. When the Archangel's trump 

Shall thunder round the globe, and summon up 

The affrighted nations from their iron sleep, 

When Earth and Ocean shall give up their trust, 

The elements dissolve before the breath 

Of the descending God ; — when His ri<^ht hand 

Shall roll the heavens together as a scroll, 

And gather up the stars as golden dust, 

Then shall we meet to part no more. O then, 

Regenerate through the living Sacrifice, 

We o'er the general wreck shall rise, and stand 

In glory up as Kings and Priests to God, 

And serve Him in His temple day and night, 

With goodly fellowship, and songs of joy, 

And praises evermore. 

'. Brother — Adieu ! 

To-night I've seen thee darkly through a glass : 
Then, face to face. Now I but know in part : 
Then shall J know, even as I am known. 



The last Oration of any length, prepared by Mr. Eells 
was delivered before the Biennial Convention of Alpha Delta 
Phi Society, at New Haven, Aug. 15, 1839, on "The Law 
and Means of Social Advancement." This was a 
theme of great interest to him, as appears from his frequent 
allusions to it in papers that are not published. Those who 
were intimate with him will remember, also, with what enthu- 
siasm he was wont in conversation to express himself, when a 
vision of what is to be dawned upon him. The address 
embodies much of his riper thought on the subject, and it is 
interesting to observe how the advance of the intervening 
thirty-five years has confirmed the sentiments he then 
expressed. Extracts from it were spoken at the preceding 
Commencement of Hamilton College, where he was a candidate 
for the Second Degree, and by many who heard it was regarded 
as his most finished andable literary Address. With it this 
portion of his Memoir will close. 



ADDRESS 

BEFORE THE 

iennial Convention 

AT NEW HAVEN, CONN 



One of the most interesting questions which can engage a 
speculative mind, is that which regards the progress and 
destiny of social man. Our earliest and strongest curiosity 
centers on ourselves, and the conditions and allotments of our 
own individual beintr ; but with the enlargement of our 
sphere of reflection, it embraces a wider field and contemplates 
the course and destiny of the species. We awake, as it were, 
out of nothing into the mystery of life ; formed to know good 
and evil, to become responsible for our actions, to feel and to 
reflect, to enjoy and to suffer, and with the certain foreknow- 
ledge of our doom, to witness a few revolutions of the sun 
and pass away. For what purpose, then, have we been 
summoned to the shores of being? What is this wonderful 
nature that has been given us? Whence hath it come? 
Whither dotli it go? It is a mighty and universal instinct 
of the human soul which prompts it to this solemn inquisition; 
which incites man to comprehend himself — his individual 
destiny ; to know the good or the evil which awaits him. To 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. ido 

satisfy this craving of his nature, he has bowed his godlike 
reason before brutes and plants ; he has questioned the winds 
and the stars, and the elements of nature ; he has called upon 
religion and philosophy, the Augur and the Oracle. 

]>ut succeeding to this question, arises one of far greater 
moment; that which concerns the destiny — not of our indi- 
vidual being, but of humanity itself. Human society — why 
doth it exist? What is its purpose, its course, its destination? 
Has it any high moral end to accomplish, or is it merely an 
association of a better sort of animals brought together by a 
common instinct, and subjected perpetually to the sport of 
passion and of chance? is it progressive or retrograde? Or 
is it wholly without law or plan, doomed to be forever tossed 
by convulsions and revolutions, and to alternate between cer- 
tain fixed limits of progress and decline? This inquiry 
involves the former one; but it belongs to a more advanced 
stage of intelligence and of moral progress. It is compara- 
tively of modern date ; and is itself a symptom of melioration, 
since it evinces how much those regards which formerly 
centered on the individual, have expanded into philosophy, 
and merged in a solicitude for the general well-being. 

The most cultivated of the ancients seem to have bestowed 
but little thought on this great and interesting subject, the 
progress of the human race; and still less on any direct means 
for its moral melioration. Viewing society only in detached 
masses, with no connections but such as grow out of a com- 
munity of origin, or out of political alliances, they were satis- 
tied with tracing the history of particular nations, without 
regarding the general course of events, or the laws and limits 
of human progress. Occupying themselves the eminence of 



156 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

society, and accustomed to look down on the great mass of 
their fellow creatures as sunk in irrevocable stupidity, how 
could they entertain any reverence for their species, or any 
high and generous confidence in the capabilities and destinies 
of man ? Incurious and indifferent as to the future, they 
seem generally to have cherished a contempt for their own 
times and an unbounded reverence for the past. Virgil takes 
it for granted that to have been born in the early ages, was to 
belong to an heroic race of men ; and that the ancient mon- 
archs of the Trojan line must have been infinitely superior to 
the family that filled the throne when Pyrrhus stood before 
the walls of Ilium. 

" Hie genus antiquum Teucri pulcherrima proles 
Magnanimi heroes nati melioribus annis " 

Horace improves on the sentiment of his master, and in three 
brief and graphic lines intimates the dreary doctrine of a 
perpetual declension of the species. Even in the days of 
Solomon, all superiority seems to have been conceded to 
antiquity; since we see the father of wisdom directing his 
reproofs against an over-curious speculation into what he 
intimates was the great and prevailing question of his time — 
" Why the former days were better than these ? " 

We of the present day have it in our power to form a more 
just and a more generous judgment of mankind. We hold a 
position from which, illuminated as it is by the lights of 
history, we may survey our own times with an impartial eye, 
looking at the past without idolatry, and to the future without 
despair. And from the survey which we are able to take, we 
gather hope and courage. Amidst all the evils and wicked- 
ness which abound in the world, we yet hold a high and 



A.DDBESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. L57 

cheering faith in the destinies of man. We believe that there 
exists in society a native tendency which nothing can subdue, 
towards a higher and more perfect state ; that amidst all its 
reverses, it retains a certain recuperative virtue by which it 
perpetually tends to recover, and more than recover, what it 
has lost; that its law, in fine, is the law of progress — of 
melioration. We believe that the great drama of this mortal 
stage has been planned by a Supreme Wisdom, which controls 
its whole movement, and which will guide it ere the curtain 
fall, to a glorious issue. Ages of darkness may intervene; a 
long dreary night in the calender of time, in which the earth 
may be rilled with violence and torn and shaken by convul- 
sions ; but a Divine Voice will at last be heard above the 
storm, commanding the elements to peace ; the stars will again 
look brightly through the breaking and retiring clouds, and 
the morning of an auspicious and perpetual day will dawn 
upon the world. 

We shall proceed to state, in the first place, the grounds of 
our confidence in the progress and destiny of humanity : and 
in the second place to demostrate what we consider the only 
means by which that destiny can be fulfilled. 

The first ground of the expectation which we indulge, is in 
the fact that some sentiment of this kind has prevailed in all 
ages, and seems indeed natural to the human heart. Even 
those poets and moralists who have professed to despair of 
human nature, placing the golden age of the world in a 
remote antiquity, have taken good care to embalm their 
despondency in strains which they fondly hoped would be 
immortal. Herein they become swift witnesses against them- 
selves ; attesting thereby, that a hope in humanity is at least 



158 MEMORIAL. OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

a vague sentiment of their hearts, if not a profound convic- 
tion of their understandings. Every anxious thought cast 
towards future times, every desire of an honorable remem- 
brance with posterity, every yearning of the spirit for immor- 
tality, is but a testimony to the strength with which the hope 
of a higher and better order of things is seated in the human 
heart. Doth not ambition herself, though covered with 
treachery and blood, thus stand up a mighty witness for 
human nature ? Art has ever committed her glorious crea- 
tions to the most enduring materials, despairing often of 
contemporary praise, but ever yearning with the sublime con- 
fidence of genius, for the juster judgment of posterity. The 
man of science, in the midst of an age of darkness, discovers 
some new and grand truth ; and struggling, like Galileo, with 
the assaults of malice, ignorance and envy, he bears it like a 
sun on high. Persecution lights her fires, and he marches 
with it to the stake : amid the wreathing and crackling flames 
he calls on future times to witness the sacrifice which he 
makes, speaks out that truth with his latest breath, and leaves 
to distant ages the sublime appeal. Reformers wrestling with 
the demons of ignorance, superstition and error, statesmen 
propounding to the w r orld better schemes of government and 
law, the martyrs in every age to liberty, to philosophy to 
religion, the traduced of every name, whose crime it has been 
to stand in advance of their times, — how have they all risen 
above the malice of persecution, and with the prophetic intel- 
ligence which points to a higher system of humanity, and the 
development of a more perfect order, calmly reposed on the 
verdict of posterity their justification and their fame ! 

This universal and concurring sentiment of all ages, that 



. ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 159 

the course of humanity is on an ascending scale, and that Light 
and Truth will finally triumph in the world, is strong and 
cheering evidence? that such will he the result. It proves 
that the doctrine of social progress has its foundation in nature. 
We are led to expect it by a sort of natural prescience ; and 
that can hardly be a false sentiment which has thus possessed 
the great and noble spirits of every age, and which so exactly 
harmonizes with the constitution of man. 

In the second place, our belief rests on the testimony of 
historical experience. It is with society as with individuals; 
experience is the universal condition of advancement. It is 
the law of our present imperfect state that we may not reach 
truth and good, but by trials and sacrifice ; by oft-repeated 
experiments ; by much baffled and toilsome endeavor. The 
changes which have passed over the world — its wars and 
convulsions, its epochs of refinement and barbarism, of degra- 
dation and of glory, — what are they all but a series of exper. 
iments upon humanity ; in which the great truths that apper- 
tain to it are developed, each in its place and order to be 
gathered into the general treasury of human knowledge, and 
committed to history, for the instruction of future ages. A 
false theory of morals or of philosophy obtains at a particular 
epoch, and is reflected in disastrous colors upon all the insti- 
tutions of the age. It passes away at last, and with it the 
fame of its founder: but humanity, which never dies, is the 
gainer from the trial. The errors of one age make the wis lorn 
of the next; and what is lost to the individual by the defeat 
of his system, or to the age by the evils which it introduced, 
has been gained to the world bv enlarging the common stock 
of human experience. The errors of the Aristotelian logic 



160 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

pointed Bacon to the true philosophical method ; and those of 
the earlier astronomers were the guides of Kepler and Newton, 
in demonstrating the true structure of the universe. Mahomet 
was not less a reformer in his day than was Luther in his ; 
and who does not observe in our own times, the gradual 
introduction of a more tolerant theology, and a more liberal 
and enlightened religious sentiment, than ruled the era of the 
Protestant Reformation ? 

Do we less mark in government, than in science and reli- 
gion, the subjection of every movement, and of the whole 
course of events to the great law of social progress ? What 
in fact has been the history of human liberty ? The earliest 
form of oppression was that of the oriental Theocracy ; the 
despotism of the sacerdotal order; and as it began with 
perverting and crushing the best part of man, — his moral 
and religious nature, — it was incomparably the most hopeless 
and deplorable. To this, succeeded the Greek and Roman 
slavery ; a system far milder in its principle, inasmuch as it 
based its claim only on the right of conquest, and did not 
pretend to consecrate its dominion by the sanction of the 
gods. This form of subjection was broken up and carried 
away in the wreck of the Roman empire ; and in its place 
came the servitude of the feudal system, in which we see the 
relation of tyrant and slave mitigated into that of lord and 
vassel. Again, the yoke of feudalism was broken, and in its 
stead rose an hereditary nobility, and the aristocratic forms 
of modern Europe ; while we, of the present day, may behold 
the aristocracy itself, — that last modification of arbitrary 
power, slowly crumbling on its foundations, and yielding, 
though reluctantly, to the demands of popular sovereignty 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 1 <) 1 

and the republican sentiment of the age. Such, in brief, has 
been the course ol civil freedom. Man has ever struggled 
with his thrall, and at every great epoch, has loosened one or 
another of his chains and thrown it off. 

That the course of tree principles will continue to be 
progressive, is manifest from the philosophy of man, as well 
as from the tenor of history. it is not in human nature to 
submit, in patient and willing endurance, to injustice and 
oppression. Among the most abject people, the sense of 
right and justice can never be utterly extinguished. In the 
most tyrannous time-, men have bowed reluctantly under 
burdens; and if they have not asserted their rights by force, 
it i- because they saw the only prospect of enfranchisement in 
a temporary, though involuntary submission to the law of a 
stern necessity. The despots who, even at the present day 
dare to trample on the liberties of Asia and of Europe, and 
who repose for immunity on the apparent apathy, the tame 
and subdued spirit, the easy good nature of the people, do but 
sleep — let them know it — over volcanic fires. The millions 
of their oppressed subjects will, one day, bring them to a 
terrible reckoning. Even now their hand- are full of wrath 
and retribution ; and if they postpone the day of their deliv- 
erance, it is only that they may make it more signal and more 
.-ure; that they may gather strength for the conflict, and add 
glory t<> the triumph. They will 

■• Wait fortheglorj of a brighter day, 
And snap the chain the monienl When they may." 

From our knowledge, then, of the nature of man, we may 
reasonably conclude thai i'vvc principle- will continue to make 
n 



162 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

progress ; but he who believes that Christianity is to become 
the prevalent religion of mankind, cannot have a doubt that its 
triumph will be also the triumph of human rights, and that in 
its progress over the world it will give light and freedom to 
all nations. The spirit of the New Testament is that of a 
pure and genuine democracy. It enjoins us to "call no man 
mastsr." It speaks everywhere its abhorrence of oppression, 
and espouses the cause of the weak against the strong. Its 
fundamental precept, " Do unto others as ye would have 
others do to you/' is nothing else than an assertion of universal 
and absolute equality. Like its Divine Author, it is "no 
respecter of persons ; " but it passes the same conditions upon 
all, and estimates all by a common standard. It tramples 
with contempt on all those artificial and vain distinctions 
which divide society ; judging all men solely by their moral 
character ; apportioning praise and blame, reward and retribu- 
tion, by the same eternal and inflexible rule. It goes abroad 
over the world like an angel from heaven, proclaiming light 
to the blind, liberty to the captive, and the opening of the 
prison to them that are bound ; and while it gives freedom to 
the nations, giving also that virtue which alone can secure 
and perpetuate it — without which liberty degenerates into 
licentiousness, and equality is but a watchword for universal 
piracy and rapine. 

This view of the propects of civil society is confirmed by 
the change which has been taking place from the earliest ages, 
in the object and character of wars. The first great revolu- 
tions originated mostly in physical wants; in the pressure of 
external circumstances or the blind impulses of a transient 
enthusiasm. The early wars were chiefly wars for mere 



ADDIJKSS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 163 

physical ascendency ; and wen; much like the struggles of 
wild beasts for the empire of the wilderness: while those of 
modern times originate in an intimate persuasion of certain 
great political truths, which have become attested by the 
experience of ages, and for whose sake men hold it their 
highest glory to suffer and to die. Compare, in this respect, 
the Trojan war with the expeditions of Alexander; the wars 
of Alexander with the Crusades; and the Crusades with the 
revolutions of modern Europe and of America; and the pro- 
gress of this change must be very manifest. It may be 
expected that in proportion as society advances, the character 
of its revolutions will become more refined and spiritual; that 
they will be struggles, not so much for privileges as for prin- 
ciples ; that they will be directed, not so much to the acquisi- 
tion of territory, or to humble the power of rival states, as to 
redeem and fix beyond the reach of change or accident certain 
great fundamental truths which are interwoven with the fates 
of the human race. 

" Truths serene, 
Made visible in beauty, that shall glow 
In everlasting freshness, unapprodched 
By mortal passion ; pure amidst the blood 
And dust of conquests ; never waxing old, 
But on the stream of time from age to age, 
Casting bright images of heavenly youth." 

li' we descend to more particular views, will they not 
confirm the same general fact of history? What political 
experiment has ever been tried, whether successful or not, 
from which have not been extracted the elements of a future 
and happier trial ? What form of society, what civil consti- 
tution, has not left its lights and monitions for the instruction 
of mankind ? What state or empire has over existed, which 



164 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EEL.LS. 

has not developed some high and momentous truths, for which 
it came into being, figured its hour on the stage, and passed 
away ? 

Take an extreme case : A nation long abused and trodden 
down by despotism, suddenly becomes possessed with the idea 
of its freedom ; and rises to reclaim and avenge its violated 
rights. Millions of hearts beat with a common sentiment of 
resistance. Every rock is made a rampart ; aud on every hill 
the flag is shaken out to the air, inscribed in letters of fire, 
"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God ! " Here is a great, 
a sublime movement ; and all that is dear, and noble, and 
holy, seems staked upon the issue. Can it prove, in any 
event, ultimately disastrous to the well-being of mankind ? 
Suppose, then, the worst possible result. After a desperate 
struggle, checkered with the various fortune of war, misfor- 
tune clouds the hope of freedom ; and defeat, signal but not 
ignominious, extinguishes it forever. If any gallant spirits 
survive the strife, in whom there yet lurks the spirit of 
rebellion, without the power of resistance, they are chained 
in dungeons ; or hunted into perpetual exile ; or immolated 
on the scaffold. The spirit of the nation is thoroughly sub- 
dued ; and she either sinks down under a despotism more 
absolute and iron-handed than the first, or her wasted territory 
is parcelled out among neighboring powers, and her very 
name is blotted out from under heaven. 

Is this a calamitous result? In itself considered, it is 
calamitous and mournful ; but never yet was a drop of blood 
wasted that was shed for freedom. Never yet fell a hero in 
her cause, who did not, like Samson, slay more by his death 
than in all his life. As was said by Pericles, of the Athenians 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 165 

who fell in theSamiaD war, "the whole earth is the sepulchre 

of such illustrious men ; and their memorial, better than all 
inscriptions, is reposited in the eternal and universal remem- 
brance of all mankind." This struggle, therefore, has not 
been a dead loss to the world. The liberty of this particular 
nation is entombed ; but a light burns over its grave, strong 
and quenchless ae the sun, which will lighten the nations to 
freedom through all ages. What she hath sown in tears, she 
will reap in joy ; and though her heroes may rot unburied on 
her battle-fields, yet their avenging ashes, far as the winds 
can bear them through the world, among all its subjugated 
nations, will become the precious seed of rebellion and deliv- 
erance. This particular experiment has failed ; but, taking 
it in all its connections, civilization and human liberty have 
suffered no discomfiture. A new and glorious chapter has 
there been opened in the moral history of man. A mighty 
sentiment has been developed on that field of carnage — the 
sentiment of Liberty, its worth, its power, its glory. This is 
the great truth which that nation was born to realize in her 
sublime and melancholy history. To reproduce it, to give it 
an imperishable form, and make it glorious in the eyes of men, 
this was her mission ; and she hath fulfilled it even to the 
letter. She hath written that truth in her blood, and hung 
the record out on high. Ere the characters have faded, the 
eye of History catcheth the inscription, and she transferreth it 
to her immortal page, to be a witness through all time and to 
all people, of the value of that freedom, for which a nation 
wasted its blood and gave up its life. 

Perhaps history does not furnish a more forcible illustration 
of this subject, than in the subjugation of the Roman Empire 



1(36 MEMORIAL OF SAMUE EELL8. 

by the barbarians. To comprehend it fully, let us consider 
what had been the course of civilization at the commencement 
of the Christian era : after Spain, Greece, Egypt, Sicily, the 
Carthagenian Empire, and a large part of Asia, had been 
subjected to the Roman. Commencing in the interior of 
Africa, she had descended into Egypt on the bosom of the 
Nile ; thence crossing the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, she 
had spread her dominion over Asia to the Indus, and over 
the whole north of Africa to the Pillars of Hercules. Here 
had been the mighty field of her ancient triumphs. Babylon, 
Nineveh, Palmyra and Persepolis, Thebes, Memphis, Tyre 
and Carthage, had been successively the seats of glory and 
dominion ; and each in its turn had been ravaged by conquest, 
or abandoned to decline. Banished from this field of her 
labors, she had next appeared north of the Mediterranean, 
where, like the sunrise in equatorial regions, she had burst 
suddenly and full-orbed on the country of Greece. Importing 
hither the results of her past experience, and combining them 
with the fresh and vigorous elements which she found among 
that recent people, she had here tried her experiment anew, 
on a new race of men, and in a country pre-eminently adapted 
to the perfect development Of individual and social man ; a 
country 

" Where Science struck the thrones of eaTth and heaven, 
Which shook, hut fell not ; and the harmonious mind 
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song; 
And music lifted up the listening spirit, 
Until it walked exempt from mortal care, 
God-like o'er the clear billows of sweet sound; 
And human hands first mimicked, and then mocked, 
With moulded limb-' more lovely than its own, 
The human form, till marble grew divine." 

But oven here she had been doomed to the same fatal experi- 
ence. After a brief but glorious existence, Greece passed into 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. K)7 

the condition of a Roman province ; and her arts, literature 
and institutions were transferred to grace the proud Capital 
of her conquerors. Hither, then, to this new seat of empire, 
and to this new trial of her own destiny, were the eyes of 
humanity now turned. Here she had collected all her 
(dements of strength. 



Hie illiu^ anna, 



Hie currus fuit ; hoc regnum dea gentibua esse 
si (jua fata sinant , jam turn tenditque fovetque," 

Every former experiment had failed ; every ancient field of 
her enterprise had been abandoned ; and Rome, " built with 
the riches of the spoiled world," the natural heir of Grecian 
civilization, as Greece in her day had been of the civilization 
of Egypt — Empress of the Ancient World, the home of Sculp- 
ture and of Painting, of Taste and Literature, of Eloquence 
and Arms, of Law and of Philosophy, gathering in her bosom 
the arts and opulence of all nations, holding at her clemency 
all kings and kingdoms from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, 
and from the Deserts to the Rhine — seemed to stand forth, 
the last great representative of the civilized world, and to 
hold in her single hand the fortunes of the human race. What 
event, then, could have appeared more inauspicious to civil- 
ization than that this last and noblest field of her labors, this 
which she held as the depository of all the Past, and the only 
pledge of the Future, should be overrun by invading and 
barbarous hordes, and and at last given back to the dominion 
of savage man ? 

Yet this event, apparently such an irrecoverable step toward 
primitive barbarism, was the means of saving civilization from 
extinction ; and of carrying forward that very progress which, 



168 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

on every principle of moral probability, it threatened to arrest 
forever. It brought a new, and, compared with the Roman 
in the days of his degeneracy, a noble and independent race 
of men into contact with the principles of social and civil 
order, and the arts of cultivated life. It furnished a native 
and vigorous soil for the seeds of such of the Roman institu- 
tions as were worthy to survive the people who had proved 
themselves unworthy to be entrusted with their preservation. 
It broke the universal thraldom of the Roman yoke. It 
originated that municipal system which has become the foun- 
dation of the jurisprudence of modern Europe. It spread 
among distant nations the seeds of freedom, law, and social 
improvement. It intermingled the blood of the northern and 
southern nations, and thus produced just that energetic, active 
and well-tempered race of men, than which none other could 
have effected the wonderful advancement of modern times. 

The case is so with all human vicissitudes and revolutions. 
They are the essential steps of that progressive experience by 
which alone humanity can ascend. Considered by themselves, 
they may appear unfortunate and baleful beyond measure; 
but they are all the evolutions of one fixed and perfect scheme, 
and indispensable elements of progress. Nations may rise and 
fall, but never till they have fulfilled their destiny. Civiliza- 
tion may wane and decay ; but the principle of its regeneration 
is immortal. Human society itself may dissolve and perish ; 
but its very dust is vital, and a new social order will spring 
out of it, like a Phoenix from the ashes of his sire. Thus in 
the material world do we behold, in its renovating processes, 
a perpetual type of the Resurrection ; youth succeeding age; 
beauty springing from corruption ; the face of nature ravaged 



\DDKHss BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 1 W> 

by the elements, or yielding to slow decay, only to be replen- 
ished anew, and imprinted with a younger life and a fresher 
glory. 

Again : it is only on the doctrine of progress that wo can 
rest any clear vindication of the moral government of Prov- 
idence. Without it, how inexplicable, how melancholy has 
been the course of human ('vents ! We stand on the grave 
of six thousand years, and we look back over the whole grand 
and solemn history of man. What a spectacle opens to the 
view ! What mournful succession of human generations ! 
What wonderful vicissitudes in human affairs ! What wars, 
what convulsions, what revolutions! How has the whole 
o-lobe been written over with the lessons of mutability, and 
ravage, and decay ! Plow have light and darkness, like night 
and day, divided the empire of the world ! Xow we behold 
some splendid constellation of genius ascend the heavens; but 
even while we gaze, the light expires from the sky, and 
midnight gathers over it like a pall. Xow the eye rests on 
some favored epoch, some golden age. Knowledge and cul- 
tivation have dispelled the rudeness of primitive times. Every 
where stand the monuments of human intelligence and skill. 
Splendid cities rise on the shores of every sea. Invention 
walks hand in hand with Science. Miracles of Art start 
forth, and Commerce spreads her wing for the remotest climes. 
Anon the wave of barbarism sweeps over the scene, engulph- 
ing all its glory and improvement, or perhaps bearing the 
wealthy ruin to some distant shore, to be framed anew by the 
labors of another generation, but only to be again undermined 
by the flood and swept away. 



170 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

Now without the doctrine of a necessary progress of the 
species, what an enigma have we here ! What in fact do we 
see in the Past, but one continuous scene of violence and dis- 
order, where Fraud and Rapine have held the empire, and 
where, if Virtue has ever obtained a doubtful advantage, it is 
only to be lost by the first mischance ; perhaps to fall before 
some gory triumph of Ambition — some wide and wild havoc, 
at which Philanthropy covers her face and turns away ! In 
such a moral chaos there is no substantial good ; nothing on 
which the mind can repose ; nothing that is worthy of human 
affection or regard. The very successes of humanity, the 
achievements of Art and Science, the triumphs of Civilization 
and Religion, are the mere casualties of a temporary good 
fortune ; records written in the sand, which the next wave of 
change may obliterate forever. They are barren of all ties 
that can link them permanently to the human heart. They 
teach no lessons of the superintending care of Providence. 
They inspire no hope. They offer no pledge to future gen- 
erations. 

But admit the doctrine of social progress, and all is harmony 
and light and order. History ceases to be a riddle. The 
direst calamities are made the instruments of advancement : 
present losses are ultimate gains ; and wherever an accession 
is made to the dominion of Truth and Virtue, it becomes 
irrevocably the property and sure inheritance of the human 
race. Amidst all the apparent confusion and derangement 
which prevail, we discern the hand of an infinite and presiding 
Intelligence, administering the moral government of the world 
for the highest good of the human family, eontrolling all 



A.DDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 17J 

events, even the most untoward, and subjecting them to this 
high and beneficent purpose of the system : 

14 From seeming evil still educing good, 
And better thence again, and better —till 
In infinite progression." 

But again : it is manifest that, in the constitution of this 
scheme of humanity, there are opposite elements of good and 
evil ; and that, by the imperfection of man's nature, his judg- 
ments — even on the highest questions of moral duty, as well 
as those which relate to the practical conduct of life — arc 
everywhere diverse and contradictory. Truth and Virtue are 
everywhere opposed to armed adversaries ; and thus the 
history of the world has been a history of conflict. That strife 
between good and evil, which passes in the breast of every 
human being under the eye of his consciousness^ is but a type 
of those mightier struggles and revolutions which take place 
on the theatre of nations. Xor is this casual to the moral 
system under which we are placed. It is its characteristic and 
necessary element. "It must needs be that offences come." 
But has the great Author of this scheme — He who formed it 
as it is, and who formed human nature as it is, various, 
limited and imperfect, who ordained from the beginning this 
conflict of the moral forces, this shock and collision of ideas 
and of opinions — Himself retired in indifference from the 
field of strife ? Takes He no superintendence of its results, 
no care of the issue ; an issue which, by His own wise appoint- 
ment, involves the interest and destiny of the whole human 
family? Here we strike a foundation on which to rest our 
faith and our hope. Either we must resolve with the fool, 
that "There is no God,'' or we must believe that a Being 



172 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELES. 

whose nature is beneficence and truth, and who delights in the 
propagation of His image, will ever preside over this conflict 
to give victory to the right ; that by His own eternal ordi- 
nance, those ideas and sentiments which most nearly represent 
the realities of things, which are most just, most beneficent, 
most truthful, though baffled and smitten down, shall rise 
again, and ultimately vanquish and prevail. 

To complete the argument thus derived from the natural 
concurring sentiments of all ages, from the whole experience 
and history of man, and from the moral government of 
Providence, let us add finally the testimony of the Scriptures 
of Truth. The pages of that " sure word of prophecy" ever 
glow with the promises and anticipations of a future reign of 
universal peace and virtue — an era surpassing all that has 
been fabled of a golden age. Not the philanthropist in his 
brightest visions, not the poet in his boldest flights, not the 
most extravagant dreamer of perfectibility, has ever framed 
such conceptions of the future happiness of the world, as have 
been unfolded in the Christian Revelation. So clear and 
striking is the concurrence of the sacred writers on this subject, 
they set it forth with such distinctness, earnestness and pre- 
cision, with such energy of language, such force and splendor 
of illustration, and in a manner so consonant to what has been 
the actual course of events, as to furnish one of the highest 
proofs that their word and mission were divine. 

Philanthropy, then, does not delude herself with a beautiful 
but baseless vision in anticipating the era of human regenera- 
tion. She sees in man himself a capacity for boundless im- 
provement, and that both the desire and the expectation of it 
are native to the human heart. She sees that his whole past 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 1 To 

history, taken on a complete scale, exhibits not a retrograde, 
but a progressive movement. She discerns, moreover, in 
individual events, even those of the most baleful aspect, the 
marks of a moral providence, the tokens oi a beneficent design, 
which appears to be t he law of the whole scheme, and in 
obedience to which lie who " sceth the end from the beginr 
ning" administers the moral government of the world. She 
sees how the most violent concussions have terminated purify- 
ing (he moral atmosphere, and arousing humanity from a fetal 
torpor; how those revolutions, which threatened the extinction 
of liberty and civilization, have carried them forward with a 
fresh progress; how cruel and unjust wars have been made 
the means of diffusing learning, commerce 1 , and the arts; how 
states and empires, which have perished by corruption or by 
the sword, have all accomplished their destiny, and given 
place to new and better forms of social order. 

In the constitution itself of human nature, she marks a 
certain conservative arrangement; designed evidently by the 
same Power which controls outward events, for the restrain 
of evil and the protection of the great commonwealth of 
humankind : an arrangement by which the most violent and 
corrupt passions of the heart are so distributed and balanced 
as to counteract each other, and thus to maintain the equipoise 
and harmony of the whole moral system ; like those; celestial 
forces whose mutual counteraction holds the masses of the 
material universe! to their orbits, and preserves in beautiful 
and eternal order the stupendous mechanism oi* the sky. 

It is not, however, to be understood that this inevitable 
progress of the human species is a uniform progress, by a rule 
that is always exact and constant to itself. The future course 



174 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

of society will, doubtless, be like the past, subject to fluctua- 
tions and reverses ; but it is the general scope of its entire 
history which must determine its destination and its law. 
There are eddies and counter-currents in the advancing wave 
of human affairs. The seeds of improvement may lie buried 
under the accumulated mould of ages, without impairing the 
germinating principle, and waiting perhaps but for some dire 
convulsion to bear to them the refreshing waters, loosen the 
soil, and turn them up to the showers and to the sun. 

Neither by the perfection of which we speak, must be under- 
stood a state in which the laws of man's present constitution 
will be dispensed with ; a state in which, like that of the 
angels, he will be without wants and without cares, discharged 
from labor and from all social and individual necessities, and 
wanting nothing to fill his capacity for knowledge and for 
enjoyment. Man has, doubtless, been created with reference 
to some end. His existence, therefore, must be subject to 
certain laws and conditions which are given and immutable. 
These are the measure of his perfectibility ; the pre-ordained 
and eternal boundaries which encircle all progress, all im- 
provement. By that social perfection which is reserved for 
society, is therefore intended, not an absolute but a relative 
perfection ; and it consists in the universal and perfect devel- 
opment of all the human powers ; of man himself under the 
laws of his nature, as a free, intelligent, social, moral, and 
accountable being. This perfection is, doubtless, the final 
cause of man, and of the whole visible creation in the midst 
of which he is placed. This is that glorious consummation 
toward which tend all the forces of Nature and all the events 
of History ; and which History itself will be one of the chief 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 175 

instruments in accomplishing ; the sun and sovereign force of 
the mora] system, attracting all the parts unto itself, binding 
them into central obedience, and diffusing over them light and 
glory; as the solar orb controls the complex and stupendous 
movement of the physical universe, bends the reluctant planets 
to their courses, and is the dispenser unto them of light, and 
life, and joy. 

But because the progress of society is thus secured by a fixed 
plan, does it therefore follow that we may repose idly on the 
wisdom and benevolence which conduct that plan, and quietly 
wait the development of the immutable order of events? 
Assuredly not. Evil is not the less evil because overruled 
for good. The ultimate ends of the system are indeed bene- 
volent ends ; but it is not on that account indifferent by what 
means they shall be effected. 

Hitherto, man has advanced chiefly by fierce and prolonged 
struggles with his fellow-man, and almost every inch of human 
progress has been won by force and by the sword. Deprecate 
wars as w T e may, they have been the effective, and, as human 
affairs have been, the necessary instruments of social progress. 
Revolutions have ever been fruitful of genius and true hero- 
ism ; and it is from them that Liberty, Knowledge, and Civil- 
ization, date their successive epochs of advancement. As it is 
only when torn by the tempest that the ocean heaves up its 
buried treasures to the shore, so it is only in the agitations 
of society, its storms and commotions, that man has been 
exhibited in his highest developments, and those truths which 
are most precious to him have been rescued from obscurity. 
It is in such periods that society is born anew. Men's minds 
rise at once into activity, freedom, and independence. The 



Hi) MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

despotism of old opinions is broken up and displaced. 
Humanity is reproduced under happier auspices, and starts 
with hope and vigor on a fresh career. 

Is not such the voice of History ? Do her great names — 
those master spirits who, in different ages, have broken up the 
old order of things, and given new impulses to the human 
mind and new hopes to the world — cluster around those 
periods of universal calm and tranquillity, when, as revealed 
to the prophet in vision, " all the earth sitteth still and is at 
rest ? " 

Without wars, the history of man would have glided away 
in one long flat monotony, in which the human mind would 
have been controlled from age to age by a single set of ideas, 
and the dominion of error would have become inveterate and 
hopeless. AVe believe, indeed, that society is destined one day 
to advance without this stimulant of wars ; but then it must 
be by virtue of an entirely different order of causes ; by sub- 
stituting the action of certain preat moral truths and senti- 
ments for that of those passions which have been the seeds of 
sanguinary conflicts. It is not enough that these horrible and 
wide-wasting commotions are made to result indirectly, and 
by the laws of the system, in the general advancement. Ac- 
tion there must be; but not that selfish and belligerent action 
which arrays man against his fellow-man, which tears society 
asunder, and dashes the disrupted masses one against another ; 
but that peaceful and benevolent action which, full of divine 
vigor, and glowing with, the zeal of all great and noble enter- 
prises in the cause of human happiness, seeks earnestly and 
directly, and exclusively, the highest temporal and spiritual 
well-being of the race. The motive force of the social system 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 177 

must be subjected to nobler instruments, and to higher and 
holier purposes. The appeal must be from selfishness, and 

ambition, and passion, and rapacity, to those sentiments and 
principles which link man to his fellow, and endear the gen- 
eral welfare to all human affections ; which, partaking the 
grand benignity of God, draw the great family more and more 
cordially together under smiles of the common Parent, and 
bind it into one universal and holy brotherhood of fellowship 
and love. 

Let it not be doubted that such principles exist ; wrought 
originally into the constitution of human nature, as pledges of 
the world's salvation. Mankind have indeed run a wide 
cycle of depravation ; yet with what force Right and Truth 
still hold their dominion over the human mind, what illustri- 
ous witness! What glorious and immortal records ! There 
is not a chapter in history so foul with guilt, that it does not 
exhibit some honorable testimony to human virtue ; some 
bright spot that looks out from the gloomy and deformed 
page, as a star looks through the raging tempest of midnight, 
from the depths of its blue and beautiful home. Truth, which 
represents universal good — Liberty, Art, Science, Religion, 
Philosophy, and Improvement — has never been left upon 
earth wholly without witness. Her cause is that of humanity 
itself; and what a world of sacrifice and martyrdom attests 
her holy power among the children of men ! Amidst the 
grossest idolatry of error, there have ever been found kneeling 
in her wide temple some pure and humble worshippers ; and 
in the darkest and most corrupt times, her altars have smoked 
with willing blood. War indeed calls humanity into action, 
and, though at an infinite sacrifice, developes and carries it 
12 



178 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

forward : but God Himself is in Truth ; and wherever it 
works on the human soul, there He also works, to enlighten 
and purify it, and exalt it into the image of Himself. That 
spirit of conquest which has aroused, and intermingled, and 
carried forward the nations, is a mighty passion ; but doubt 
not that Truth is both mightier and bolder than Ambition ; 
and when Ambition, with the world for his theatre and his 
prize, has exhibited his best — when, sated with triumph and 
with blood, he has lain down the sword and the sceptre, and 
has retired from the scene — then Truth, like an angel, will 
walk the stage, and after shifting all its sable scenery, will 
eradiate it with her own glory, and in the day of her pure 
and bloodless victory, will bless the world with peace, and 
light, and ever- during love. 

We turn now to the inquiry, What are the means by which 
society is to be carried forward to this era of its perfection ? 
And the principle which we set forth is, that they do not lie 
within the compass of any of those sentiments which prevail, 
almost universally, respecting the improvement of society ; 
that no means are adequate to raise man to the highest dignity 
and felicity, but. moral influences acting on his interior condi- 
tion — on the inward, spiritual character. We hold that all 
real and permanent improvement must begin from within and 
work outwardly ; that the fountain of all social progress lies 
in the moral nature of man ; and that every civilization which 
has not its foundation and support here, must decay and come 
to an end. 

It must be acknowledged that this simple and essential truth 
seems, as ' yet, to be scarcely apprehended. Yet it is written 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 1 70 

everywhere. It is the paramount lesson of all philosophy, all 
historv. It is traced on all the monuments of departed great- 
ness. It speaks in a thousand voices from the hoary past. 
And society will have taken one of the greatest steps which it 
lias ever made towards its perfection, when this one funda- 
mental truth shall become firmly seated, as it ultimately must, 
in the convictions of mankind. 

And in the first place, we affirm that the perfection of the 
social state does not depend on the perfection of the useful art* ; 
or on any triumphs, however splendid, of mere physical 
achievement. 

Art, in its earliest state, is but a rude handicraft wherewith 
man supplies the first necessaries of nature. In its more 
advanced stage, it adds a thousand articles of ornament and 
convenience; and in its maturity, it comes to the aid of the 
most refined civilization; heaves its marble piles to the sky, 
covers the sea with ships, and the land with cities, and temples, 
and monuments of public enterprise and wealth. And when 
the nation that has reared them has passed away, she leaves 
behind her these high and memorable traces of her passage to 
oblivion. They affect strongly the imagination; travelers 
carry the astonishing description of their ruins into every lan- 
guage ; and History celebrates and mourns over them, as the 
exponents of a national greatness which has been, but which is 
now departed forever from the face of the earth. We arc 
thus led to estimate a nation's glory by the greatness and 
magnificence of its monuments ; and to consider the state of 
Art as an index to that of humanity itself. 

But let us take a nearer view of this matter ; and let us ask, 
soberly and practically, What has all this pride and pomp of 



180 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

achievement done for the advancement of the race — for man's 
highest ultimate well-being ? The temples and works of this 
wonderful people — the proud mausoleums built to lock up a 
few handfuls of royal ashes — hold they any pledge for pos- 
terity, any secret of human melioration ? Is, then, this mould- 
ering masonry all the legacy which this people has bequeathed 
to future generations ? And even this barren inheritance — 
how soon must it all dissolve and pass away ! Decay and 
oblivion are written on the wall of adamant. Even those 
stupendous and time-defying piles which prop the Egyptian 
sky, must crumble at last, and waste into their native sands : 

" We turu to dust ; and all our mightiest works 
Die too. The det p foundations that we lay, 
Time ploughs them up and not a trace remains. 
We build with what we deem eternal rock : 
A distant age asks where the fabric stood ; 
And in the dust, sifted and searched in vain, 
The undiscoverable secret sleeps." 

Of what account, then, to humanity are all these magnificent 
erections — these trophies of art and strength ? Do nations 
come into existence, like the ant and the beaver, only to build ? 
Have they no higher purpose to fulfill, than to appear on the 
stage of being, gather power and opulence, pile up a few 
masses of brute matter, and pass away ? 

But there is a more serious consideration. Physical im- 
provements depend on public wealth. They reciprocally 
produce each other ; and the highest state of both has ever 
been regarded as that national prosperity which is the chief 
and ultimate end of government and of society. But the era 
of national prosperity has ever been that of degeneracy and 
corruption. The mind is then drawn off the spiritual world 
and absorbed in the material. It is filled with the pride of 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL. CONVENTION. 181 

power, and the passion for gain. Temptations multiply and 
strengthen, while the power of resistance Is diminished. The 
empire of reason and of the moral sentiments is weakened by 
the encroachments of artificial wants, and finally gives way to 
that of luxury and the dominion of all selfish and sensual 
passions. The appetites of man arc stronger than his reason ; 
and let him be placed in the center of a general prosperity — 
spread before him art, and opulence, and all the means of 
gratifying his passions — and unless you place within him the 
dominion of a supreme moral law, a power that will enable 
him to control himself, and divert this overflowing abundance 
into its proper channels, he will infallibly make it the means 
of self-debasement and self-destruction. Alexander was a 
prince of wonderful energy and self-command ; but he who 
subdued himself to all the hardships of the camp, and through 
perils and difficulties almost incredible overcame all nations, 
was himself overcome by the manners and vices of the van- 
quished. After entering Babylon in triumph, we find him 
yielding to the pleasures and effeminacy of that corrupt city, 
and at last closing his wonderful career in a fit of drunkenness 
at a royal banquet. Alexander conquered the world, but he 
could not subdue himself. "Annis vlcit, vitiis victus est" 

History is full of such examples ; but they all demonstrate 
a principle which is universal, and which applies even more 
strongly to masses of men than to individuals. The Athenian 
state never exhibited such an external show of opulence and 
prosperity as in the age of Pericles ; and if there were any 
virtue in the arts to effect a permanent social melioration, we 
might expect to see it developed in the times of him who lifted 
the columns of the Odeon and the Parthenon. It was the 



182 MEMORIAL OF SAMUE EELLS. 

ambition of this man to raise trophies and monuments, temples 
that might worthily be dedicated to the gods, and whose great- 
ness and splendor should eternize his own memory, and the 
glory of the Athenian name. When he was accused of too 
lavish an expenditure on the public works, he said : "Let the 
sums which I have expended be charged to my account ; but 
let the edifices be inscribed with my name." The fickle mul- 
titude replied, that they were content to own the glory of these 
achievements, and that he " might expend of the public treas- 
ure as much as he pleased." We see here exhibited the spirit 
of both ruler and people. The triumph of the ornamental 
and useful arts, as well as of the letters and philosophy of 
Greece, was in the age of Pericles ; yet Socrates and Plato both 
testify that it was under his administration that the decline 
and corruption of the State began. 

The same truth is demonstrated by the Roman history. 
The Romans surpassed all the world in the splendor and 
magnitude of their public works ; but it was at precisely the 
period when their wealth was most abundant, and their arts 
had reached the highest perfection, that corruption seized upon 
the State. This indeed is the natural course of what is called 
national prosperity ; for it is in the very lap of abundance that 
the fatal foe is nursed and warmed into life. Luxury is not 
the growth of an early state of society. She is the child of a 
late and overgrown prosperity. She is born in palaces ; and 
arrays herself in all the charms of a perfected art — in the gold 
and purple of a ripe and cultivated age. In Rome, as in all 
the states of antiquity, corruption first took possession of the 
capital of the Empire — the seat of art and refinement — and 
extended gradually to the provinces. Pliny dates the decline 



AJDDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. L83 

of the Stale from the victory over A.ntiochus by Regulus and 
L. Scipio ; which contributed, perhaps more than any other, 
to the aggrandizement of the Roman name. Cato himself, 
who shared the* glory of the Asiatic conquest, foresaw its con- 
sequences to the manners and fortunes of the Roman people ; 
and we hear the inexorable sage, in the same breath, denounc- 
ing the profligacy of the times, and imploring his countrymen 
to cease running after the pictures and ornaments of Asia, and 
to let the statues of Greece stand in peace on their pedestals. 
But the reign of degeneracy bad commenced, and his admoni- 
tions were given to the winds. The conquest of Asia intro- 
duced Asiatic vices and effeminacy; and luxury, stronger than 
the arms of Antioch ns or of Hannibal, avenged the conquered 
world. 

Luxuria tncubuitqne ulciscitur orbeiu." 

These examples demonstrate, if any can, that wealth and 
t\w arts, so far from securing the permanent progress of man- 
kind, carry within themselves the elements of their own 
destruction. They abridge the labor of man, by subjecting to 
hi- service the power of natural agents; but is it clear that the 
happiness of the race is in the inverse ratio of the necessity for 
labor? Is it the perfect state of man to live in perfect inac- 
tivity, with all his selfishness and brute passions about him, 
like the idle gods of mythology ? Labor is the great primary 
law of our condition ; and the absence of it is a blessing only 
when the wealth, leisure, and refinement, which are the fruits 
of a high state of civilization, are snatched from the voluptu- 
ous appetites, and made the ministers to moral improvement, 
to the development and cultivation of individual man. The 



184 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELXS. 

glory of a State consists, not in its monuments, but in its men. 

" Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, 
Thick wall or moated gate; 

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; 
Not bays and broad-armed ports, 
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; 
Not starred and spangled courts, 
Where low-bred baseness wafts perfume to pride; 
No ! Men, high-minded men — these constitute the State.'' 

Wealth and the arts are valuable, not in themselves, but as 
means to an end ; and that end is a moral end — the develop- 
ment of man's spiritual nature — the highest moral well-being 
of the human race. The splendid civilization of the present 
age, with all its wonderful improvements — its triumphs of 
art, genius, invention, and discovery — must be tried by this 
test; and if, when weighed in these balances, it be found 
wanting, it has failed of its end ; it is spurious, must pass 
away. You may indeed give it to posterity; but as you give 
withal no principles of progress or of perpetuity, posterity, 
like a spendthrift heir, wilt squander and destroy its own 
inheritance ; and as the children of each generation build the 
sepulchres of their fathers, so the civilization of each age, while 
it continues untempered with the leaven of this high moral 
purpose and character, will be buried by its successor in the 
same eternal and changeless cycle of progress and decline. 

In the next place, we affirm that the means of perfecting 
the social state do not consist in mere intellectual cultivation. 

It would seem to be a very obvious truth, that all methods 
of man's real and highest improvement must be adapted to 
his real nature, and be commensurate with all his capacities. 
Were he a being of pure reason, without moral qualities or 
emotions, without passions or sensuous inclinations, the perfec- 
tion of his reason would be the perfection of his nature ; and 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 185 

intellectual cultivation alone would be the legitimate means 
and measure of his progress. But we know that he has a two- 
fold character; that he is a moral, as well as a rational being; 
and, moreover, that his moral nature 4 , though it be essentially 
the superior and diviner part of him, is the seat of all the 
disturbing forces — all the derangement and diseases of 
humanity. The miseries and evils of the world — the wars 
that have desolated it, the oppression that has enthralled it — 
come not from the feebleness of human reason, but from the 
selfishness of the human heart. Herein lies man's whole 
difficulty and disorder. Tt is, not that he cannot discern the 
right ; but, as a heathen poet has beautifully acknowledged a 
great moral truth, it is, that though he sees and approves the 
right, he nevertheless pursues the wrong. 

'' — Video uieliora proboque, 

Deteriora sci|iior. " 

Even an Apostle, in surveying his own internal constitution, 
was obliged to mourn over "a law in the members warring 
against the law of the mind." We are therefore led neces- 
sarily to seek for a different end and method of man's improve- 
ment, and to treat him with a higher order of influences, 
adapted to his multiform and wonderfully- compounded being. 
And the question becomes simply this : Whether, in the high- 
est possible cultivation of the intellectual faculties, there is a 
power which will reclaim and renew- the moral nature; which 
will subdue the selfish and obdurate will; correct the sensual 
appetites ; chain the raging passions ; eradicate all the vicious 
and perverse propensities of the human heart, and enstamp it 
anew with the moral image of the Divinity ? If any such 
power existed, its proofs would be clear and positive ; for 



186 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS, 

wherever we turned our eyes over the face of society, we 
should find mental excellence and moral worth keeping equal 
and exact pace with one another. Knowledge would then be 
the inseparable ally of Goodness ; and we should ever see the 
noblest forms of intellectual development associated with the 
greatest inward purity and the most scrupulous practice of 
the moral virtues. Keason would then be the great central 
luminary of the moral system, and all the virtues, drawn by 
its fond attraction, would gather to it, and circle around it 
beautifully and forever, like the bright planets around the 
Sun. 

But is such in fact the law and system of humanity ? Let 
us ask this question, first, at our own breasts ; and take the 
testimony of our inward individual history. Who can 
affirm that with the steady enlargement of his faculties since 
the period of his infancy, there has been developed a corre- 
sponding law of moral progress, and moral melioration : that 
during all his life, he has only been improving on the inno- 
cence of his childhood ; that with his daily advancement in 
thought and knowledge, he has become proportion ably a more 
conscientious, a more scrupulous, and a better man ? 

And, to turn our observation abroad over society and over 
the history of mankind — do we find that the mere knowledge 
of moral obligation universally brings to itself the practice of 
what is true and right, and just ? Have the sublimest efforts 
of genius always been associated with the greatest purity of 
life and morals, and have they been dictated by a comprehen- 
sive and benevolent regard to the well-being of mankind ? 
The French philosophers of the last age — mark their pale 
and thoughtful brows, as they come out of their closets, knife 



A.DDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 187 

in hand ; and. flingingup the red caps of revolution with a 
shout, rush hot upon massacre, or fall quietly into their places 
around the guillotine ! Do we not know that men of the 
noblest order of intellectual development have been often, like 
Napoleon, Alexander, and Hannibal, men of cruelty and 
blood? Have we not seen the most powerful and cultivated 
minds enslaved to the most degrading vice? ; the most noble; 
and ethereal genius enthralled in brutal dissipation ; illustrious 
orators and statesmen governed by the maxims of a crooked 
and corrupt policy ; and godlike talents of every order and 
description, stimulated to action by sheer selfishness, and made 
the willing instruments of sensuality and vice? 

Among nations, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact, that 
the ages of their intellectual refinement have been also those 
of their moral degeneracy; and, as in Athens under Pericles, 
and Rome under Augustus, we see a beautiful and polished 
literature, a subtle and mature philosophy, and an exquisite 
relish for the productions of art and taste, reflected in their 
brio-litest colors, like the last glories of the evening sun from 
the clouds, over the verge of darkness and decline ! 

It is conceded that mental cultivation, within certain limits, 
has a general salutary influence on the moral character of 
man. It softens and refines his manners, regulates his social 
intercourse, and raises him from the rudeness of savage life to 
a perception of high enjoyments, and a sphere of noble and 
elevated pursuits. These are great and happy effects surely ; 
but the\' are produced only up to a certain degree. They do 
not rise to the fountain of human action. They do not change 
the essential elements of the human character. They do not 
reach into the inward, spiritual life. And the question here 



188 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

is, not whether intellectual cultivation has any power to 
mitigate the social condition, but whether it is an adequate 
remedy for all its disorders ; whether it has power to eradi- 
cate all depraved appetites and passions, and to extinguish in 
the human heart the very elements of evil ? Where are the 
proofs of such a power ? In the whole history of mind, where 
is the instance in which this mighty effect has been realized ? 
You see no such example among the living. You will ask it 
in vain from the records of the dead. 

In this sympathetic and wholesome action, which is admitted 
to exist, of the intellectual on the moral man, we discover that 
beautiful and mysterious connection which prevails in the 
mixed constitution of humanity ; and which, though it falls 
far short of being an adequate remedy for the social condition, 
is yet just sufficient to reveal the wisdom, the order, the sub- 
lime unity of the original design. In man as he is, we behold 
a shattered fabric — a splendid ruin ; but as we survey the 
sculptured glory that lies prostrate — column, capital, and 
architrave, which some direful shock has swept away, and 
whose inert fragments can never of themselves rise up again 
into their places — we see that they are all parts of a glorious 
whole ; we detect their harmony and proportions, and we learn 
how fair and perfect was the work as it shone fresh-formed 
from under the hand of the great Master Builder, and under 
the light of an approving and benignant Heaven. 

But again : we judge of a remedy only by its actual opera- 
tion and effects. If intellectual cultivation be the universal 
sanative that we are seeking ; if, in fact, it have the power to 
redeem and regenerate humanity ; then Literature, in all its 
forms, would be seen as the actual instrument of this sublime 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. L89 

end ; adapted in its own nature to produce it, and working it 
out everywhere with a vital and omnipotent energy. How 
has Literature satisfied this test ? lias it acted, in fact, as a 
grand specific for the moral malady of the race? Take it in 
its most glorious periods — the Elizabethan, the Augustan, 
the Alexandrine, the Periclean eras. Has it borne tin 1 impress 
of a moral purifier; and has it always gone forth on its holy 
mission to reform and regenerate mankind ? It cannot be 
disguised that the great mass of literature has, in all ages, 
been itself contaminated with the very disorders of which it 
is claimed to be the cure. To the vices and passions of the 
heart, it has been rather a subject, than a ruler ; reflecting, at 
once, man's intellectual glory, and his moral degradation. The 
gratifications of literary ambition, the thirst of applause, the 
indulgence of that ardent enthusiasm which is the tempera- 
ment of genius, sordid calculations of gain, and the dreams of 
posthumous glory, — these have been its motives and its ends ; 
its inspiration and reward. Controlled by such influences, 
Literature has ever taken the cast and color of its time. It is 
moulded by present passions, and the prevailing tastes of the 
age. It consults the inclinations of man rather than his 
duties ; and excludes, or softens down all truths and senti- 
ments which are unpalatable to the perverted heart. In 
short, it adapts itself to man as he is, without any purpose or 
thought of elevating him into man as he should be. 

Is this the omnipotent agent that is to regenerate the world, 
and restore it to the golden age of primeval happiness and 
innocence? Let us be assured, if we trust to it, we lean on a 
broken reed ; we climb stairs of sand. The stream cannot 
rise higher than its fountain : and Literature itself must flow 



190 MEMORIAL OF .SAMUEL EEEES. 

from a loftier source ; — must be made up of purer elements, 
and be governed by a nobler order of motives, before it can 
become the honored instrument of redeeming man from the 
thrall of moral bondage, and leading him forward to the 
perfection of his nature. 

What an era will that be, when the intellect of man, with 
all its glorious and immortal powers, shall become the minister 
to his highest moral well-being ; when Literature, instead of 
ever feeling the popular pulse, and following ignobly in the 
wake of popular opinion, instead of pandering to his follies, 
vices and passions, shall enter on its great office of restoring 
him to the moral image which he has lost : when History, 
Poetry, Eloquence and Philosophy, and the whole sisterhood 
of art and letters, shall join hands with Faith, and Love, and 
Reverence ; and, like a band of singing angels, reflecting only 
the Beautiful and the True, — consenting with all that is 
excellent and divine, shall win his affections from whatever is 
gross, selfish and sensuous, and, leading him upward along 
the course of an infinite spiritual progression, shall direct him 
to the fruition of the eternal and all-perfect One, as the 
consummation of his good, the true end and glory of his 
being ! 

But in the next place, the remedy of the social condition is 
not to be found in forms of government; or in any systems, 
however perfect of law and civil order. 

Government being a natural and necessary want, mankind, 
as if by common consent, have seemed to fix their highest 
hopes of social melioration on the improvement of civil 
constitutions ; — on ideas of legal order and political prosperity. 
For the perfection of these civil forms, they have undertaken 



address before the biennial convention. L91 

wars and revolutions ; and studied and toiled and bled from 
age to age. The most sagacious and powerful minds have 
been concentrated on this single idea. They have had no 
idea beyond it : as if it were a primary and universal convic- 
tion that the perfection of the social state consisted in a perfect 
system of civil government : — a system all the powers of 
which should he SO balanced and distributed as to secure at 
the same time the greatest personal liberty, and the most 
implicit obedience to the public will. 

A -ingle consideration must demonstrate the fallacy of such 
expectations. Government pre-supposcs the necessity of 
restraint: in other words, it supposes passion, violence, cor- 
ruption: that is to say again, it supposes that very state and 
condition of humanity of which we arc now seeking the 
remedy. Take, then, the most perfect constitution that reason 
can devise, and by what provisions will you eradicate these 
elements of disobedience and misrule: or, retaining these, 
what security do you give against agitation and dissolution ? 

Such systems have been often attempted. Men of every 
order of genius, — the sage, the statesman, the philosopher, 
have toiled day and night, in putting together the frame-work 
of a perfect body-politic; adjusting the harmony of the mem- 
bers; bracing it with nerves and sinews; fitting all the 1 parts 
with most exquisite and laborious reason, till they have 
become pale and bloodless as their own abstractions : but when 
they have brought out their beautiful model from the closet, 
and animated it with the passions of our common humanity, — 
put within it the blood and movements of common life, they 
have seen it torn limb from limb, and its fragments flung high 
in air. 



192 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

To abridge our inquiry on this head, it may be confined 
to governments of the popular form. We assume the natural 
equality of all men as a primary and indisputable truth ; and 
that all civil constitutions are just and perfect, adapted to 
secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number, exactly 
in proportion as they conform to this original and fundamental 
principle of all just government. And we conclude, there- 
fore, that if governments founded on the basis of the popular 
will and of personal freedom, prove incompetent to perfect 
human society, we must abandon all hope of securing this end 
by the agency of civil and political forms. 

Government, as it supposes restraint, also implies power : 
and power, wherever it be lodged,-— whether it be concen- 
trated in the few, or parcelled out among the multitude, — 
carries with it an inherent tendency to licentiousness and 
corruption. 

The whole diplomacy of modern Europe is founded on 
the admission of this unhappy truth. The system known 
as the "Balance of Power/' — what is it but an universal 
acknowledgment that the States of Europe stand to one 
another in the attitude of beasts of prey ? 

"Tigris agit rabida cum tigride pactini 
Perpetuuiu sievis inter se convenit ursis." 

What is it but an acknowledgment of the lawless rapacity 
with which each would seize upon the rest, were it not 
deterred by the jealousy of its neighbors, and by that equality 
of strength, which, and not the sense of right, or the faith 
of treaties, is the common security of all ? 

Tacitus has observed of Vespasian, that he was the only 
man that was ever made better by the possession of power : 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. L93 

hut for one Vespasian, how many has it converted, like Nero, 
into monsters of wickedness and oppression ! 
Power then corrupts ; but how ? Corruption is not a 
sary element of power. There have been good rulers in 

the world, and the administration of the universe is carried 
on in infinite love. Were the heart of man pure, power 
would be but another name for beneficence : and it corrupts 
only because it removes artificial restraints, and administers to 
those sensual passions, which exist primarily in the human 
breast independently of the fact of power, and independently 
of all social and political regulations. 

This again throws us back upon the source of all the social 
disorders: — the original and deep-seated selfishness of human 
nature. 

Is the difficulty at all relieved by distributing power among 
the mass, under the forms of a popular constitution ? Is not 
the mass made up of the same elements, and subject to the 
same passions as individuals? Do the majority never tyran- 
nize ? Or is the rule of an hundred tyrants better than that 
of one ? 

Where is the Republic that has always exercised its power 
with moderation ; with a just and scrupulous regard to the 
rights of other states, or even of its own people? Look at 
the ancient democracies of the Athenians, the Spartans, the 
Thebans, the Achaians, the Macedonians, each in its turn, 
and as often as it had the power, aiming at the subjugation of 
all Greece. Look at the republics of Rome and Carthage ; 
each eyeing the other with inveterate hatred, and each grasp- 
ing with insatiable ambition the empire oi* the world. Look 
at the popular revolutions in Spanish America for the last 

12 



194 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

thirty years. Look at those "republics without number, 
which rose in Italy during the middle ages ; whirled on their 
axles, and foamed, raged, and burst like so many water-spouts 
upon the ocean." And the greatest, the most popular, the 
most perfect Republic the world has ever seen ; — would to 
God she might be excused from the category of those free 
States whose power has been used to oppress the weak, and 
which have known no law but the law of the strongest ! But 
can we pass her by ? Is not the stain of a great national 
robbery upon her ; — on her public journals, on her whole 
history? What has been her course of policy towards the 
original proprietors of the soil ; who held it by that highest 
of all titles, a charter from the God of nature ; — the right of 
original and immemorial possession ? By craft, by rapacity, 
by the repeated and flagrant violation of the faith of treaties, 
and finally by armed force, they have been hunted from forest 
to forest, and from river to river, through a period of more 
than two hundred years. Now while I speak, the miserable 
remnants of these once powerful tribes are climbing the 
farthest mountains ; carrying with them nothing but their 
household gods, and the bitter memory of accumulated wrongs. 
From yonder summits of everlasting snow, they turn to 
take a last look at the broad and beautiful land of their 
fathers. But the sword of the white man pursues them, as 
the sword of the angel pursued the exiles from Paradise. 
Beckoning a sad adieu to their ancient hunting grounds, to 
the graves and glory of their ancestors, they descend the 
Western Slope into the wilderness which skirts the Ocean ; 
and history, willing to do a late redress to an injured and 
exiled people, looks in ;vain for any memento of their race 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. L95 

among the shadows of the setting sun. Melancholy indeed, 
hut stern and decisive, is the lesson which we gather from 
these examples. 

While, therefore, the tendency of power is invariably to- 
wards corruption, and this not less under the popular than 
under the regal and aristocratic forms, it is now received as a 
political axiom, that Republican governments above all others, 
require the support of morals and virtue, and can stand on no 
other foundation. A monarchical government may become 
corrupt and fall to the ground; and yet the foundations of 
social order not be entirely broken up. A revolution happens. 
It may be the work of a single night, — of a single dagger. — 
The title under which the new sovereign ascends the throne, 
is written in royal blood, while the masses who have had no 
share in the administration of the government, scarcely feel 
the shock of its transfer. But in a Republic, the people are 
in every thing the actors. It is theirs to legislate and to 
annul : to fix and to change ; to build up and to pull down : 
and it is theirs, too, to endure the weight and suffering of all 
public calamities. Corruption in the people, therefore, is a 
disease which fastens at the very life of a free government : 
it inHames and festers at the heart ; and there; is no prescrip- 
tion in the whole pharmacopeia of political philosophy that 
can restore the vital organs, or save it from dissolution. 

Political freedom supposes the self-government of individ- 
uals : and self-government is but another name for virtue. 
All human legislation, so far forth as it is just and perfect, is 
but a transcript of that supreme and immutable law which is 
written on all hearts, and whose obligations extend over all 
rational beings. He who recognizes the sanctions of this 



196 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

divine code, will not need the restraints of human legislation. 
He is a law unto himself. He has the root of all obedience 
in his own will. He carries in his own breast, at once a 
perfect government, and a perfect freedom. 

" He is the freeman whom the truth makes free." 

These truths were boldly proclaimed by Pope Pius VI, during 
the popular frenzy and commotions of the last century. 
"That virtue," says he, "whose duties are prescribed by the 
light of nature, and more fully brought to light by the 
Christian dispensation, is alone capable of bringing mankind 
to perfection and preparing them for supreme felicity ; and it 
alone can be the foundation of a prosperous democracy. 
Clothed with mere moral virtues, we should be but imperfect 
beings. It is religious truth which can alone supply the 
graces which are requisite for general self-government. The 
foundation of such a system must be, that every one is to 
respect the rights of his neighbor as much as his own : which 
is but another way of stating the Christian precept to ' love 
your neighbor as yourself/ " Perhaps this generation is not 
yet too *\ise or too good to learn something from a Pope. 

It is said that the great safe-guard of popular government 
is in the responsibility of its rulers to the people : but what 
is the security against corruption in the people themselves ? 
" Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" If it be essential to freedom 
that rulers shall be held responsible to the people, it is not 
less so, that the people in their turn shall hold themselves 
responsible to Him who * s the Supreme Legislator and 
Sovereign of nations. A sense of the paramount obligations 
of the moral law, — an active, intimate, personal sense of 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 197 

moral accountability in the individuals of the mass, is the 
only security of a free government against itself; — the only 
middle-ground on which it can' rest between anarchy and 
despotism. 

All History is a verification of these truths : but we shall 
cite one great and decisive example in which they were fully 
tested before the eyes of the whole world ; — an example 
the most terrible in its development, and the most fruitful in 
its lesions of any upon record. The first French revolution 
was an experiment on popular institutions which, in its objects 
and the causes from which it sprang-, combined all the 
elements of a great and successful reform : and the cause of 
its direful miscarriage stands out therefore,, conspicuous and 
undoubted for a lesson to all nations. A corrupt and oppress- 
sive government supported by a taxation which exhausted 
the people ; a military despotism which even a servile soldiery 
could not brook ; judicial decisions and offices of every 
description set up to public sale ; justice standing with her 
golden scales, to weigh — not the proofs of the case — but the 
value of the bribe; — the occupations of the laboring classes 
looked on with contempt, while half their earnings were 
wrested from them by royal prerogative and by ecclesiastical 
exactions, to maintain a corrupt court, and an imbecile and 
licentious clergy ; — these made up the great cause of the 
revolution. These were the grievances for whose redress rose 
that cry of " Liberty !" which echoed from the Capital to the 
Alps, and from the Alps to the Ocean. With such a cause, 
supported by a great and powerful people, — a people distin- 
guished for their fertility of genius, their enthusiasm, boldness 
and valor, nothing seemed wanting which might give to 



198 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL, EELLS. 

France a free constitution ; and through her to every nation 
in Europe. One thing, however, she did want : — a moral 
and virtuous people ; and wanting that, she wanted every 
thing. 

" The sensual and the dark rebel in vain, 
Slaves by their own compulsion. In mad game 
They burst their manacles, and wear the name 
Of freedom graven on a heavier chain " 

Henry the Fourth had publicly declared that he held him- 
self amenable to two sovereigns, — God, and the laws. But 
the French people began their reform by renouncing alle- 
giance to both. The spirit of resistance was tempered up 
with no reverence for religion. Not only was it barren of all 
those sentiments which are the peculiar fruit of Christianity, 
but it scorned that natural and devout reliance, common even 
among barbarous nations, upon Him who is the God of battles, 
and who holds in His hand the destinies of all people. Clubs 
were formed in every part of the empire for the propagation 
of Atheism ; and more than twenty thousand persons, 
including those of the highest literary distinction, were 
employed, hour by hour, in exterminating all sense of moral 
obligation, and every sentiment of private and public virtue. 
The Encyclopedists were the impersonation of the spirit of 
the revolution : and as Condorcet himself boasted in after 
times, they had employed learning, talents, wit, philosophy, 
and eloquence, for the abolition of two equally odious things ; 
royalty and religion. They proceeded throughout upon the 
principle that Christianity and republicanism could not sub- 
sist together. This frightful doctrine they wrought every 
where into the national mind; expecting to hold its terrible 
volcanic power in check and control it to their purpose, by 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 199 

Such devices as a representative convention ; — skillful opera- 
tions of finance; a political establishment on the theory of 
natural right ; and more absurd than all, — a national oath 
to be renewed by all Frenchmen every fourth year of the 
New ( Calendar, " to live free or die." Infatuated men ! Illus- 
trious dupes of impiety and folly! What virtue do yon 
expect from your " national oath " after yon have thus extir- 
pated every sentiment and every principle that can give it 
solemnity or sanction? What barrier will yon raise against 
the tides of popular fury, when they have ceased to obey the 
attraction of the skies? 

But that nothing might be wanting to make this experiment 
complete and final, or to show that it was made by the whole 
nation in its corporate capacity, the Government by a solemn 
public act, renounced its allegiance to Heaven, and established 
impiety by law. It decreed that all religions signs, whether 
in public or private places, which might serve to remind the 
people of their ancient faith, should be annihilated. It voted 
death an eternal sleep. It abolished funerals, and decreed 
that all deceased persons should be buried like the carcasses 
of brutes, without ceremony or religious service. It abolished 
the Sabbath ; and gave up all churches and places of worship 
to plunder. It ordered the Bible to be publicly burnt by the 
common hangman ; and, as if to extirpate the very memory 
of scripture history, it instituted a new calendar, in which the 
divisions of time should be marked by no reference to the 
Christian era or to Christian institutions. 

The world stood aghast at such a bold and shameless 
desecration of every thing pure, and venerable, and holy. 
Men's hearts failed them for fear; and they waited for the 



200 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

event in fixed astonishment, as they wait for the avalanche or 
the earthquake. Those who managed the vessel of State had 
thrown chart and compass overboard, and madly put out on 
the sea of revolution. They had hailed the rising sun of 
liberty with joy : but now that the ocean swelled, and the 
air darkened, with what terror did they behold his broad 
blood-red disk climb a sky black with tempests, and sounding 
with loud thunders from side to side ! It has not been left to 
us to record the horrors and crimes of that eventful period ; 
when Paris, the seat of art and elegance and fashion, became a 
great slaughter house, and the throne and the altar floated in 
blood away from their foundations. When one executioner 
tired with his horrid work of chopping off human heads, 
another was called to stand in his place; — and another, — and 
another. No love was left. Every man was an assassin ; and 
the murderer of to-day, while his hand was yet upon the axe, 
was marked the victim for to-morrow. And thus the Repub- 
lic, drunk with blood, staggered on under her load of misery 
and crime, towards the gulf of military despotism ; — an abyss 
dreadful and profound as hell. Anarchy is always impatient 
for a tyrant : and in a State so fruitful of monsters as France 
had been, he could not long be waited for. There was a 
brief, and fearful pause ; when lo ! — girt about with darkness 
and clad in complete steel, a stern and solitary figure, bred out 
of the seething mass of national corruption, — the offspring 
and very image of the times, — rose on the highest wave of 
revolution, with the imperial Eagle in his hand ! The Tribu- 
nate hailed him as the supreme head of the nation, The 
Senate entreated him to accept the purple. The army follow- 
ed, and laid the glory of a thousand victories at his feet. The 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 201 

people shouted, " Vive L'Uhnpereur Napoleon /" and — the 
French Republic was do more. 

The revolution was not simply an essay towards a new 
constitution for the State. It was a great moral experiment 
on the nature of man ; to prove its capacity both for wicked- 
ness and for suffering; to try what might be its rage and 
convulsions, — what its madness and its woe, when moral 
restraints should be thrown off, and every trace of religious 
sentiment, so far as nature could suffer such a violence, should 
be obliterated from the mind of man. The world had never 
witnessed such an experiment, and it will probably never 
witness it again. The eye aches as it gazes at that fearful 
tragedy through the glass of faithful records : and those dark 
and gory forms which rule the scene, seem more like the horrid 
phantoms of a fever-dream, than like human beings moving 
and acting on the real sta^e of human affairs. 

Time is a kind and lenient judge of human actions. It 
softens and mitigates their o<uilt : and while it brings forward 
into the foreground whatever is worthy and noble, it forgets 
all common vices ; all but the most enormous wickedness. 
But the deformities of this picture only show in broader and 
bolder feature with the lapse of time. Under the pen of each 
successive chronicler, that story of guilt and blood stares 
forth in more fearful characters; and it will stand out on the 
page of history to the eye of the latest posterity, as it does 
to ours: unrelieved and alone ; without a parallel or a like- 
ness. 

Let this revolution U? contrasted with that which, just one 
century before, had abolished the tyranny of James J I. and 
placed William III. on the throne of England. The latter 



202 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

had its foundation in those very sentiments which it was the 
first business of the former to crush and extirpate. It was 
dictated not more by the love of civil liberty, than by a pre- 
vailing sense of those obligations which are paramount to all 
human authority ; by a sacred regard to the rights of con- 
science and the religious institutions of the country. " We 
have nothing before our eyes," — said the Prince of Orange, in 
reply to his memorable invitation to the throne,— " in this 
our undertaking, but the preservation of the Protestant 
religion ; the covering of all men from persecution for their 
consciences ; and the preservation of their laws, rights, and 
liberties, under a just and legal government. We do there- 
fore hope that all men will judge rightly of us and approve of 
these our proceedings ; but we rely chiefly on the blessing of 
God for the success of this our undertaking, in which we 
place our whole and only confidence." 

It was not possible that a revolution founded in such senti- 
ments should end in anarchy and disaster. While the French 
people, as Burke observed in the English Parliament, a had 
only made their way to a bad constitution through the 
destruction of their country," the English, by a tranquil and 
bloodless revolution recovered their liberties, restored the 
fundamental law of the State, established the constitutional 
succession to the crown, secured to every subject the freedom 
of speech and of conscience, and opened the way to a career of 
unexampled national prosperity and glory. 

We have thus far sought in vain for the means of reclaim- 
ing and perfecting human society. We have seen that if this 
power reside any where, it is not in wealth ; nor in the arts ; nor 
in physical improvement; nor in knowledge and philosophy; 



A.DDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 203 

nor finally, in political freedom, or systems of law and 
government. " The depth saith it is not in me ; the sea saith 

it is not in me." As often as the structure of society has 
been reared from these materials, — a beautiful and resplendent 
fabric built upon the sand, — the tides of violence and passion 
have burst np from within and drowned out its foundations. 

The great States of antiquity combined all these elements; 
and realized every thing that can be attained by acting on the 
merely external and social condition of man. Why is it, then, 
that their decay and fall have become the mournful theme 
of history ? Why have the splendid civilizations of former 
ages, — the African, the Asiatic, the Greek, the Roman, all 
perished and passed away "like a tale that is told?" 

If we turn our eyes from their dazzling exterior, and look 
steadily at their internal moral foundations, we shall find the 
only solution which can be given to this question. They 
were not indeed entirely beyond the dominion of those great 
moral truths which lie at the foundation of all social order: 
but those truths were seen with an unsteady and bewildered 
vision ; they were allied to the most revolting superstitions ; 
and the civilizations which sprang from them, while they 
shot up a luxuriant growth, exhausted the moral vigor of 
the soil till it had no power to perpetuate or renew them. 
What idea must we form of the morality of the celebrated 
nations of antiquity, when we find that they all — the Egypt- 
ians, the Phoenicians, the Persians, and even the polite Greeks 
and Romans at some periods of their history, made human 
sacrifices a part of their religion ! We are told that Hamilcar, 
in his engagement before Jlymera, spent the whole day in 
piling up living men like logs of fuel on the fire to propitiate 



204 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

the gods. It was the glory of a Carthagenian mother to 
bring her little infant to the brazen statue of Saturn, and 
without a sigh or a tear, lay it in the red and horrid arms of 
the burning god, and see it consume to ashes before her eyes. 
History tells us that at the seige of Carthage, two hundred 
children of the first families were laid upon the flames, and 
that more than three hundred of the best citizens voluntarily 
rushed into the arms of the burning and bloody Moloch and 
expired. It is well known that the Lacedemonians, so 
renowned for their pure and simple manners, encouraged 
theft, doomed feeble infants, the sick and the aged to destruc- 
tion ; and in imitation of the old Asiatic superstitions, even 
scourged their own children to death in honor of the goddess 
Diana. The celebrated Spartan virtue was but the virtue of 
a shrewd order of savages ; — the result of a school of disci- 
pline whose sole object was to conquer in battle ; and which 
guarded against a depravation of manners only because it 
tended to enervate the state. Lycurgus himself never had an 
idea of cultivating morality among his people for its own 
sake, and on the ground of its own intrinsic worth and obli- 
gation. No matter how much his institutions violated the 
moral law, so that they promoted boldness, subtlety, fortitude, 
and address, — qualities upon which he fixed the foundation of 
the State. 

And what shall we say of the morality of the Athenians ; 
to whom the very name of a just man was a reproach not to 
be endured : who always flattered their tyrants, while they 
rewarded their best citizens, as Miltiades, Socrates, and 
Phocion, with fines, banishment and death ? And that very 
Aristides, celebrated all over the world as "The Just," — of 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 20o 

whom it was said by Plato, that "of all the illustrious men 
of Athens, he only was worthy of real esteem/' could set at 
naught every obligation of natural justice when he thought it 
for the. interest of the commonwealth. It was he who 
advised the Athenians to break the articles of confederation 
which had been ratified among the allied states under the 
sanction of the most solemn oaths; at the same time distinctly 
admitting that by that act, both lie and they incurred the 
guilt of a deliberate perjury. And on another occasion, when 
it was proposed in council that the public treasure, which had 
been deposited in the temple of Delphi at Delos as a common 
fund lor the protection of all Greece against the barbarians, 
should be removed to Athens, — this renowned Aristides rose 
in his place and said : " the action is not just, but it is expe- 
dient ;" and by his influence and counsels he carried that 
measure, in violation of the very terms of the treaty of alli- 
ance, in contempt of the national faith, and of the oath which 
he had himself taken in behalf of the whole Athenian people. 
Had the moral views of this man been based upon any true 
foundation, had they sprung from a scrupulous and conscien- 
tious reverence of the right for its own sake, he would have 
felt the obligation of justice to be perpetual and without 
exception : he never would have admitted the doctrine of 
expediency as opposed to the rule of right ; nor would he have 
tolerated that other pernicious maxim, that what would be 
injustice and perfidy in individuals, is in some sort purged 
and sanctified by passing under the seal and authority of the 
State. 

If we now turn to the Roman character, we shall find it 
still more, essentially defective. Of all the names in the 



206 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

Roman history, Cato, Cicero, and Seneca, if not the only ones 
that are worthy of consideration in this respect are at least the 
most favorable representatives of the moral state and char- 
acter of the people. Of these the first, as we shall presently 
see, was not incorruptible. Seneca, with all his beautiful 
moral precepts, which however, he could not himself reduce 
to practice, was a sycophant to Nero, and a suicide. Cicero 
indeed was in this respect an exception to all antiquity. In 
the midst of a profligate and corrupt age, he seems to have 
been guided by a divine light ; and both in his writings and 
example, to have foreshadowed that pure and perfect morality 
which was then about to be revealed to the world in the 
Christian faith. But to show how little sympathy the 
Romans themselves had with such a character, we need only 
consider that they drove him into exile, confiscated his estate, 
and could not be satisfied till they had seen his hands and 
bleeding head fixed up to the public gaze, on the very rostrum 
where, at the hazard of his life, he had snatched his country 
from destruction. The men whom the Romans loved and 
honored were such only as brought into their Capital the 
spoils of vanquished nations ; — those whom the world calls 
heroes ; and who, as observed by Seneca, " have been not less 
the pests of the human race than fire and flood/' 

One of those famous depredations was the robbery of 
Ptolemy, King of Cyprus ; and it is noticed here, not so 
much on account of the thing itself, which was of a piece with 
the whole Roman policy, as to illustrate the character of the 
principal agent in the transaction. Under the false pretence 
that the kingdom of Cyprus had been annexed to the Roman 
dominions by the last will of Alexander, grandson of Physcon, 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 207 

king of Egypt, and which, if true, should have bound them 
still more inviolably to its protection as a Roman province, 
they order a deputation thither to depose the king, and bring 
immense treasures to Rome to be laid up in the public treas- 
ury. In justification of this robbery, they alleged that 
Ptolemy was a miser and that he was a cruel and bad man. 
And who invested the Romans with the censorship of the 
morals of a foreign potentate on his hereditary throne, and 
living at peace in his own dominions? Or if cupidity be so 
foul a crime, which conduct is the more execrable ; that of 
Ptolemy who amassed his possessions by the slow degrees of a 
minute and toilsome economy, or that of the Romans them- 
selves, who rush upon those very possessions like a vulture on 
his prey : seizing them with both hands and with boundless 
rapacity ; and who to obtain them, dethrone the lawful prince 
and drive him to suicide ; rob a people both of their treasure 
and of their sovereign, and devote their State to ruin ? 

And here we have an accusation to lay at the very door of 
Roman morals in the person of the younger Cato. Not to 
mention certain acts of his domestic; life too shameful to be 
told in this assembly, nor his cowardly suicide when he saw 
the victorious Cassar approaching the gates of Utica, and 
which might find some apology in the Stoic philosophy which 
lie had embraced, — it is enough that this celebrated Cato, — 
whom Plutarch pronounces to have been " the best and most 
illustrious man of his time," — courted by the nobility, by 
statesmen and philosophers, as if in his person were reflected 
all the probity, the moderation, the justice, and generosity of 
the Roman character, — lent himself to this infamous plunder 
of Cyprus, and was the very life and blood of the whole 



208 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

abominable transaction ! What judgment ought we to form 
of this Cato, the austere, the veracious, the incorruptible, 
when we see him after he had stowed the treasure in his 
galleys to the amount of seven thousand talents of silver, 
bringing out the furniture and effects from the royal apart- 
ments, and selling them off under the hammer with his own 
hands, and over the very coffin of the deposed king, like any 
common huckster to an auction rabble ; keeping accounts of 
sales to the very smallest article, by way of showing to the 
Romans that he had not embezzled the fruits of his piracy, 
but that he had discharged his stewardship with clean hands ; 
and at last embarking from the plundered and defenceless 
island, to receive the reward of his vile mission in the con- 
gratulations and honors which he is to receive from the senate 
and people of Rome ; boasting to them that he had brought 
more treasure to the commonwealth from Cyprus, than Pom- 
pey had from all the wars with which he had ravaged the 
world ! 

There cannot be more infallible signs of the depravity of 
national character, than acts of great public injustice obtain- 
ing apologists and supporters in those private individuals who 
are reputed the most illustrious- for probity and virtue. It 
may safely be asserted that while Rome held the supremacy, 
she never in one instance exercised her vast power with the 
purpose of improving and elevating the condition of mankind. 
She has not left on record, even by her own partial historians, 
a single action, nor a single trait of policy, which did not 
centre in her own aggrandizement and the subjugation of all 
nations to her arbitrary will. As her wealth increased and 
her empire extended, she became more and more haughty, 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 20!) 

imperious and tyrannical ; till she reached thai perfection of 
wickedness, — that last stage of national depravity, when 
bloated power raises its head without a blush and spits against 
the heaven- ; when perfidy and cruelty and oppression scorn 
even the gloss <>f specious pretences, hut are acted with a high 
hand, and in the face of day. 

Is it wonderful, then, that those ancient forms of society 
should all have fallen to pieces and passed away, since they 
were so essentially defective in the only conservative virtue ; 
the only principle of a permanent and progressive melioration ? 

We hold the religious sentiment in man to be the basis of 
all civilization. Laws, manners, government, institutions, 
are but the external realization of internal humanity. All 
the various forms of civil order and social life are the 
embodiment, — the sensible expression, of inward ideas and 
sentiments: and of these latter, the most important, — those 
which give to the resulting- civilization its character and 
direction, are those which relate to man himself; and to man 
as a spiritual and religious being. No human creature is so 
stupid or so vile, as not to have some notions of right or 
wrong ; of a superintending Providence ; of a future state ; 
and accountability for human actions. These ideas, — the 
sacred and eternal archetypes engraven on the hearts of all 
mankind, make up what we call the religious sentiment. 
They are native to the human soul ; and if their dominion 
were withdrawn from any form of society, that society could 
not subsist for a single hour. Among barbarous and savage 
tribes, where the religious sentiment is vague, wandering and 
imperfect, their laws, habits and institutions, must be of the 
same character ; unsettled and rude : and it is precisely 

L3 



210 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

because they have no clear and accurate perceptions of the 
great truths of their moral nature, that they remain barbarous 
and savage. In proportion as these religious ideas conform 
to what is right and true, to the realities of our spiritual 
being, in that proportion will the resulting civilization be real 
and enduring. It originates in them : they fix its character, 
and preside over its destiny. 

It follows hence, that no civilization but that which is 
founded on a perfect system of moral truth, can be stable and 
perpetual. Such a civilization must necessarily supercede and 
survive every other. Every other, — no matter with what 
splendors it may have exhibited itself, no matter what 
achievements it may boast, or how it may seek to link itself 
to the only progressive and abiding life, — hath not the living 
principle within it. Its period is marked, and it hastens to 
its destiny. 

In conclusion, it is our purpose to show that such a system 
really exists in the world, and is every day working out those 
mighty moral changes on which alone the hopes of humanity 
rest. 

The primitive religion of the East contained some of the 
elements of the Christian faith. In all its forms, — even the 
most absurd and barbarous, — were manifested and acknowleged 
distinction between right and wrong; the ideas of a future 
existence, of a Supreme Governor of the world, of moral 
accountability, and of expiation for disobedience : and it is to 
the power of these primitive and fundamental sentiments, 
— natural to all men, that we are indebted for all the splendid 
but short-lived civilizations of the ancient world. It was the 
office of the Christian mission to rescue whatever of religious 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 211 

truth vet survived in the Pagan world, Prom the debasement 
of* ignorance, fear, credulity and superstition, with which it 
was blent up, and to (each it again in its primitive purity : 
and further, by elevating man's reason to a clear perception of 

his moral wants, and furnishing a solution of tho3e great 
problems connected with his nature and destiny, which had 
ever haunted his imagination, hut which his philosophy had 
never been able to resolve, to lay down a perfejt and infallible 
law of moral conduct. 

Such, then, was Christianity: on the one hand, it was a 
republication of natural religion : on the other, it was a rev- 
elation of such new truths as were necessary to the perfection 
of man's nature, hut which his reason alone had not been 
able to comprehend. In its primitive state, it was merely a 
System of moral precepts, given to the world, and left to work 
out its regeneration by acting on the conscience and character 
of individual man. There was no tie among its adherents but 
a moral tie ; — the sympathy of a common faith : a fellowship 
which was intimate and strong; but simple and personal ; — 
without creeds, discipline, or organization. 

It becomes necessary here, to note a clear distinction between 
the principles of the religious body and its government; — 
that artificial organization which was wholly of human origin ; 
and which, falling as it often did, into the hands of ambitious 
and bad men, was the author of all the enormities of religious 
persecutions. This discrimination is not only just in itself, 
but it is essential to our forming a proper estimate of what 
Christianity has done, oris capable of doing for society. 

The Church indeed, assumed the power of punishing for 
heresy, and for ages the robes of her priesthood were red with 



212 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

the blood of saints. For her intolerance, bigotry and perse- 
cution, we offer no apology or palliation. It is the right of 
reason to be free : of opinion to be free : of conscience to be 
free: and every act of human authority to restrain or coerce 
either, is a wrong done to the whole human race, and treason 
against the moral government of God. 

The Church then persecuted ; but whomf Where did she 
hud her victims, but in those varieties of sect and creed which 
were continually springing up in the great body of believers; 
and which, while they demonstrated the moral activity and 
vigor of the Christian faith, were a perpetual declaration of 
the independence and freedom of the human mind. Where 
there is no liberty, there are no sects ; and heresy itself, which 
drew down all the terrors of ecclesiastical vengeance, was but 
another name for intellectual and spiritual freedom. Surely 
we must discriminate between the tyrant and the victim : 
between the spiritual government which usurped, and the 
great mass who were the subjects of her usurpation ; or those 
free and bold spirits who, as Huss, Wickliffe, Zuinglius, 
Luther, and Melancthon, were but representatives of the 
popular spirit and the popular convictions. Christianity, so 
far from being chargeable with the enormities of the Church, 
was always their suffering and protesting victim. In the 
terrors of the rack and the dungeons of the Inquisition, — in 
the martyrs whose purple life bubbled out under the axe, or 
who for the truth walked with steady foot into the fire, 

" whose ashes Hew- 
No marble tells us whither," 

we behold her sublime testimonials to the supremacy of con- 
science and individual reason; to the freedom and dignity 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 213 

of man ; and against every act of cruelly and persecution 
which has been charged upon her, she lias left her own solemn 
protestation on immortal record, sealed with blood and with 
fire. 

We make no enquiry here as to the genuineness or authority 
of the sacred writings; hut taking Christianity simply as a 
system of human opinions, let us now briefly trace its connec- 
tion with social advancement, as that connection lias been 
developed in the progress of events. In its infancy, it with- 
stood the persecution of the Roman Emperors, bitter and 
bloody beyond all parallel in history ; in less than four centu- 
ries from the time of its foundation it had abolished the idola- 
try of the whole Pagan world. When the barbarous nations 
of the North swept like a tempest over Italy, and the whole 
world seemed given up to anarchy and violence, Christianity 
not only stood her ground, but rose with new vigor and 
undertook the work of subduing to her mild and peaceful 
reign the barbarians themselves. It was not by means of any 
great and powerful organization that she maintained herself 
against those successive torrents of invasion, which swallowed 
up an immense nation ; its laws, customs/its very language; 
which swept away every ancient establishment, and all the 
institutions and glory of the Empire. It was by virtue of 
her own peculiar and primitive spirit, — her native adaptation 
to the moral wants of humanity, — to the nature of the univer- 
sal man, barbarous and civilized, that in those ages of anar- 
chy, she survived the general wreck and conquered the con- 
querors of the world. 

During the period which succeeded the overthrow of the 
Western Empire, — that long, dreary night of time, which it 



214 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

seemed nothing could survive that did not hold within itself 
the principles of an immortal life, she carried in her own 
protecting bosom all the elements of social improvement, and 
brought them safe across the gloomy and desolate abyss. 
" Religion," says Hallam, " alone made a bridge, as it were, 
across the chaos, and has linked the two periods of ancient and 
modern civilization." When the world began to emerge from 
the slumber of ages, we find her concerned in the very first 
movements of awakening reason. Religious creeds and sys- 
tems of theology are the first product of intellectual activity, 
and the first voices that we hear are the disputations of the 
schoolmen. Then, with Dante at its head, rose the brilliant 
period of Tuscan literature ; and contemporary with him, we 
hear Roger Bacon, a Franciscan monk of England, laying 
down the principles of the inductive method, in as clear and 
exact terms as those in which they were afterwards expounded 
by his more illustrious namesake of the sixteenth century ; and 

who, without acknowledging his indebtedness, has won to 
himself all the glory of the new philosophy. 

It is true that under those renowned Doctors and Dialecti- 
cians of the middle ages, Christianity did not make a rapid 
progress ; nor did she add very considerably to the domain of 
letters and philosophy. She was but just beginning to recover 
from the universal lethargy. The cumbersome habiliments 
of barbarism were yet upon her : and though she was thus 
early struggling to throw them off, she had not yet learned to 
stand erect. The red too of the Papal power was over her ; 
but worse than all, she was bound down under the iron yoke 
of the ancient philosophy, and forced to feel her way slowly 

toward illumination under the shackles of a barren and 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. '2\~) 

technical logic which had taken possession of the Universities, 
and which held a despotic rule over human reason even until 
the time of Francis Bacon and Des Cartes. 

Looking, thcix at the scholastic Theology, as n means of 
awakening the human mind, and comparing it, — not indeed 
with the enlightened philosophy of modern times, but with 
the profound torpor, the universal midnight which had preced- 
ed it, — it appears as a star heralding the dawn ; the first 
blush of morning that is to spread and redden with the 
advancing day. 

There is one fact connected with the history of this period 
which must not escape our observation. From the tenth to 
the fifteenth century, the corruption and profligacy of the 
Papal power were beyond all parallel in history. Its 
depravity and its ambition were alike unbounded. It 
assumed all temporal — all spiritual authority. It made 
traffic of nations. Tt usurped the thrones of kings. It 
gave away crowns and continents ; and its dominion 
over the fortunes of Christendom, over lite, liberty and 
conscience, was the most atrocious despotism that was 
ever wielded by the hand of man. If any thing could have 
extirpated Christianity from the earth, it must have been the 
atrocities which were acted in her name for a period of five 
centuries ; and it i^ no mean proof of her inherent vital 
power, that she not only withstood the corruptions of the 
Romish hierarchy, but as they became more and more invet- 
erate, her own spirit and principle- grew proportionally active 
and vigorous. Amidst all the confusion and profligacy of the 
times, the leaven of a pure faith was doing its w<>rk in the 
great mass of the people which composed the Christian nations 



216 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EEI,LS. 

of Europe ; bringing together the detached elements of the 
social system ; creating general interests and general senti- 
ments in place of those which were local, partial, and indi- 
vidual ; centralizing the great moral forces of society, and 
daily ripening it for that revolution which, more than any 
other, has secured the freedom and happiness of mankind. 

Christianity was the parent of the Reformation ; and 
through it, of all that is wonderful and mighty in the civil- 
ization of modern times. The voices of the Reformers sound- 
ed like the resurrection trumpet over the world; and the dead 
nations started into life. The darkness of ages rolled away J 
and learning, art, taste, commerce, discovery, and philosophy, 
rose in glory from their sepulchres, and walked the earth with 
the beauty and majesty of immortals. Whatever there is in 
modern civilization to command our surprise and our rever- 
ence, to excite our faith and our hope ; whatever it hath of 
greatness or of glory in its history ; whatever that adorns the 
human character, and gives elevation and dignity to man, 
must be ascribed to the revolution of the sixteenth century : 
and to that pure faith, and the force of those great moral ideas 
which brought that revolution into being. 

The next great impulse given by Christianity to social 
progress, is before our eyes, and is a part of our own glorious 
history. The disco verv of the New World was one of the 
first fruits of the great struggle of the human mind to achieve 
its freedom ; but the splendid part that was to be acted here 
in the great drama of human progress, was reserved for a riper 
age. The early settlement of America by the Puritans is the 
most remarkable event in history. Its simple and severe 
grandeur surpasses all that hits been fabled of the heroic ages; 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 217 

but its sublimity is derived wholly from the motives and * 

moral character of' the enterprise. The pilgrim fathers were 
not mere colonists: they were not adventurers for gain ; they 
were not discoverers; nor navigators ; nor commercial factors, 
sent to draw forth the opulence of a distant and barbarous 
country to enrich the parent land. They were voluntary 
refugees, who for their worship and their faith, wandered from 
country to country, and found no rest, till they had placed 
the dividing Ocean, with its dark and vast solitudes, between 
themselves and the vices and oppression from which they fled. 
Like 4 the " Father of the faithful," they went out into a land 
which they knew not. They brought their altars with them 
into the wilderness ; and while ferocious savages and hungry 
beasts of prey gathered to that strange spectacle, they set up 
those altars on an inhospitable short 1 , under an open and 
inclement sky, and there kneeled for the first time in peace, 
themselves, their wives and their little ones, to the God of 
their fathers. They were spirits of a kindred stamp with the 
Reformers ; — men of a sturdy and iron mould who under- 
stood their work, and who counted not their lives dear unto 
them, so they might accomplish their great apostleship. 
They seem to have struck home at once, as by a divine 
instinct, to all the great truths of religion and of govern- 
ment. The one was the purest form of republicanism, as the 
other was the simplest form of faith ; and those great moral 
ideas for which they had forsaken their pleasant homes beyond 
the ocean, and every object that was naturally dear to human 
affections, they wrought up into their civil constitutions, 
and made them the basis of the whole social and political 
system. 



218 MEMORIAL, OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

Then, as a necessary consequence, followed the struggle of 
the revolution : for religious freedom and civil liberty must 
stand or fall together. But the result was sure ; the burden 
of the work was already done. England waged her mad and 
unnatural war, not with men, but with principles : the very 
principles which, but a few ages before, had triumphed over 
barbarism and renewed the face of Europe ; principles which 
had already become incorporated into the character and moral 
life of the nation ; and which, once thoroughly perceived, and 
firmly seated in the convictions of any people, no power on 
earth can extinguish or subdue. Ideas were the rebels which 
she undertook to crush. Subtle and invisible foes they ; and 
omnipotent withal : like Milton's angels, — 

" Spirits that live throughout 



Vital in every pari, 

And cannot hut by annihilating die." 

The success of the American arms only consummated the 
work which the pilgrims had begun ; and all this mighty and 
prosperous civilization which, after a little more than two 
centuries, we behold poured abroad over the continent from 
one ocean to the other, is the fruit of that social and civil 
organization whose foundations were laid by the Pilgrim 
fathers in suffering and in faith. 

It can scarcely be doubted, that a system so intrinsically 
adapted to humanity, which bears within itself such powerful 
elements of social progress, which has already run such a 
career of conquest, and so essentially transformed the face of 
human affairs, must be that perfect system of moral truth 
which we are seeking ; that it is the great and only remedy of 
the human condition ; and that it is destined one day to 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 2\ { .) 

regenerate and take possession of the earth. Such are the 
relations of Christendom to the rest of the world, social, com- 
mercial and political, such its physical and moral superiority, 
such its vigor, enterprise, and restless activity, that this result 
must fall ultimately into the natural course of human events. 
But Christianity herself moves in advance of her own civiliza- 
tion : and does not wait the tardy operation of philosophical 
causes. Conscious of her power over universal man, and that 
she holds the world's destiny in her hands, she has under- 
taken, as a specific object, and as her own proper work, the- 
reclamation, — not of provinces or of continents, hut of all 
nations; — all the millions of humanity. Possessed by this 
august idea, — an idea infinitely surpassing in the grandeur of 
its conception, every project of ambition, every dream of uni- 
versal empire, — she has surveyed the enterprize from all its 
points. She has marked out with an astonishing boldness and 
precision her plan of operations, and moves to its execution 
with a fixed and steady eye; with boundless energy, and 
inextinguishable faith. Already she is in occupation of seats 
of power in every division of the globe, and speaks to its 
swarming multitudes in two hundred languages of the many- 
tongued earth. In Africa, she has taken up her line of posi- 
tions from Cape Palmas to Port Natal; and in Asia, from 
Constantinople to Ceylon ; and thrown a belt of moral light 
like a galaxy over either continent. She has touched the iron 
sceptres of Brahma and Mohammed, and they crumble from 
their hands like ashes. She gathers her school on the Acrop- 
olis of Athens, and works her printing presses under the 
shadow of the Pyramids. She has kindled her light- among 
the [slands of the Southern and Pacific oceans ; and the 



220 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

Polynesian cannibal comes running from his native woods, and 
sits at her feet clothed, and in his right mind ; eats her sacra- 
ment, and worships at her altars. And wherever she moves 
over the world, she carries with her all the fruits of that civil- 
ization which she has spread over the face of Christendom ; — 
its liberty and its literature ; its arts and its opinions ; its 
commerce, agriculture, knowledge and philosophy. Thus she 
is commingling and assimilating all the races of men ; and by 
acting at the fountain of all social improvement, on the interior 
and moral life of man, she is building up a new order ot 
society, and securing it on deep and imperishable foundations. 
The Spirit of Him who said " Let there be Light/ 7 is moving 
over the face of the moral chaos, and it will not return void. 
It will bring light out of darkness, and order out of confusion. 
It will summon into being a new world, more beautiful and 
glorious than that over which angels and the answering stars 
shouted on the morning of creation ; — a world of harmony 
and love; where humanity will hold fellowship with heaven; 
in which the Spirit of Truth will preside to guide into all truth? 
and over which it will reign with a serene and holy dominion 
forever. 



Gentlemen, Brothers : 

It is ours to witness the coming-on of this era of man's 
regeneration. As yet we are tenants of the Valley of Shadow ; 
but we live in promise of the dawn. Its twilight is already 
breaking around us. We feel the fresh air of morning. We 
sec the steps of Day upon the mountain-tops. 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. '2'2\ 

Gentlemen : We stand in sublime connexions with the past 
and with the future. We hold the former by history ; the 
latter we possess by anticipation and by hope. ( hir own age is 
the product of all the past, and is itself pregnant witl<» all that 
i- to conic : and when that great and benevolent design in 
which the scheme was conceived, shall be realized in the per- 
fection of man's moral and social condition, the end will meet 
the beginning, and the cycle of humanity will be complete. In 
our own age, each of lis hears his part in the development of its 
events, as each event bears its part in the development of the 
series. Thus each of us represents a portion of universal 
humanity : and the influences which he communicates to it can 
never be extinguished, but by the extinction of the race. In 
this high and spiritual sense, he lives perpetually among men — 
a sublime and imperishable lite. The individual dies ; but 
the man does not : at least no part of him that is necessary to 
society, or worthy to survive. A power originates with him, 
which is nevertheless superior to him and beyond him. His 
thought, his ideas, and the example of his life, which are the 
strict and proper representatives of himself, go forth to the 
world, and no power on earth can call them back. They 
attach to the aggregate of human intelligence ; enter into 
universal combinations, and as they work out their effect- on 
society, each effect becomes in its turn a cause more active and 
mighty than its own, and thus on in an increasingly complex 
and everlasting progression. Gentlemen, we shall live and 
act, every one of us, on the condition of man and on the world's 
destiny, when an hundred generations shall have trod on our 
iusensible ashes. A fearful, yet glorious heritage, is this social 
immortality : — a descent cast' upon us by the law of our moral 



222 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

being. Even if we would, we cannot rid ourselves of the heir- 
ship ; and He who imposed it, will hold us chargeable with it 
at the last account. 

Let us comprehend the whole extent of our relations. 
Why should a man, — a rational and immortal man, with the 
image and superscription of God upon his forehead, made but 
" a little lower than the angels," — wrap himself up in these 
sordid and vulgar cares, this ever-besetting littleness of life, 
and play away his great existence ? O let our spirits rise and 
range ! Let them live, and be at home among these great 
conceptions ; these stupendous realities which attach to our 
moral being ; these sublime relations which we bear to human 
destiny, to God, and to universal existence. While we survey 
the progress of events, while we glory in the onward march of 
revolutions, let ns not forget our individuality, or our obliga- 
tions to the world of mankind. Let us ever bear in mind that 
the true idea of human regeneration, is that of a moral empire, 
to be established by moral means, over the hearts of men : and 
that he who would hasten this consummation, must begin bv 
setting up that empire first in his own breast, and then extend it 
throughout the sphere of his action, over his fellow beings. In 
this voluntary moral power, exerting itself in individual and 
associated effort, lies the whole philosophy of human progress. 
This is the instrument by which the world is to be enlight- 
ened and redeemed. And, Gentlemen, to seek this perfection 
of the human race through the agency of its moral regenera- 
tion, is the chief end of man : — the " supreme good." This 
simple formula contains the answer to that momentous 
question which has ever perplexed and baffled the speculations 
of the wisest philosophers. It is the summing up of all 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIENNIAL CONVENTION. 223 

knowledge; — all real wisdom. He who has formed a just 
estimate of human life, — who, alter surveying all the r\u\>, 

for which men live and labor, has discerned this to he the 
only one that is truly valuable and worthy of his nature, — 
has comprehended the whole mystery of his being; and he 
who labors for this end with a faithful and true spirit, fulfills 
the designs of his Creator; and, though he should he cut oil' 
in the midst of his days, he will not have lived in vain. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HIS PROFESSIONAL LIFE AND SUCCESS. 

IN February, 1835, Mr. Eells commenced the practice of 
Law in Cincinnati, with such prospects as are indicated by 
his remark : " I am entering on the duties of an arduous 
and crowded profession, with no experience, dependent on it 
lor my daily bread, with a host of competitors all interested 
in holding me under water ; poor, friendless, a stranger in a 
strange place, doomed to hard work and little or no pay, for a 
time at least. But I am a young man, free as the wind, with 
a tolerable education, inured to hard study by long habit, and 
capable of bringing to the work not great talents, but what 
will supply their place, viz. : great assiduity, diligence, appli- 
cation, exclusive devotion to the duties I attempt, a prompt 
and unwavering self-sacrifice, and withal a free high, spirit of 
native and unconquerable independence that bows to nothing 
but God." For several months he did not have a case, and 
his first opportunity to appear at court was assigned him by 
the Judge in defence of a man without money or friends, 
indited for larceny. By degrees, yet very slowly, he attracted 
the attention of some of the eminent men who at that time 
occupied the Bar in Cincinnati, and in November of that year 
he was invited by Salmon P. Chase to become his partner. 



HIS PROFESSIONAL LIFE AM) SUCCESS. 225 

This was more than his ambition could have anticipated, 
iar more than lie had dared to hope. Mr. Chase had been in 
successful practice for several years, and even then had given 
promise of the distinction he has since attained, so that it was 
justly regarded by the young man to whom he was attracted, 
as an evident indication of good, when a position in his office 
was tendered him without solicitation. He realized the 
necessity now imposed upon him to task every power to 
maintain himself, and to do justice to the duties that were at 
once thrust upon him. As an advocate lie was likely to 
Bucceed, because of his fondness for forensic address, and his 
gifts which specially qualified him to affect those before whom 
he might so appear; but as a counsellor he needed much 
thorough study, and the more established habit of discrimina- 
ting thought ; and he resolved in this respect also to excel. 
His success may be best learned from the words of some of 
the distinguished men who knew him well, and after thirty 
years of public duty and professional care remember one who 
was their associate but for so short a time. 

Chief Justice Chase, in reply to an invitation to attend a 
Convention of Alpha Delta Phi, writes thus: 

" It would gratify me much to be able to meet the brethren 
of the Alpha Delta Phi, who will celebrate the Thirty-fifth 
Anniversary of the Fraternity in Cleveland; but it is by no 
means likely that I can enjoy that pleasure. Should J be 
absent, however, I shall not the less cordially sympathize 
with those who may be present. The generous aims and 
noble purposes of the Association must needs endear it to all 
it< members. In my thoughts and feelings it must ever 
have a special interest, derived from my intimate relations 

14 



226 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

with Samuel Eells, who took so large a part in its original 
organization. During some of the earlier years of my practice 
of the law he was my partner, and his rare gifts and uncom- 
mon attainments gave promise of a brilliant career. To a 
most persuasive and prevailing, eloquence, he joined the grace 
of high literary culture, and the strength of profound legal 
knowledge ; while in the walks of private companionship he 
was equally endeared by his tenderness and his manliness. 
His highest title — and it is the highest title of the most 
exalted of men — was Christian ; and his faith was at once 
serene and sublime. He died young, but the career begun 
among men is continued among angels. Pardon this inade- 
quate tribute to my friend, and accept it as the best proof of 
my affectionate interest in the Fraternity." 

The following short letter should also have a place here, 
written after the above, and in the midst of the thronging 
labors of his official station : 

Washington, May 26, 1866. 

My Dear Sir : I will enclose your letter immediately to my 
partner, Mr. Ball, whose memory is better than mine. Be- 
tween us I hope something may be produced of what your 
brother was in Cincinnati. If I were to rely wholly on my 
own recollection, the account would be brief indeed ; but it 
would be all eulogy — a sun that scarcely rose above the 
horizon ere it hastened to its setting, but during its brief 
course all radiant with the light of mind, and its setting with 
new and softer glories from the world which needs no sun. 
Yours truly, S. P. CHASE. 

Rev. James Eells, D. D. 



HIS PROFESSIONAL LIFK AM) SUCCESS. 227 

Hon. W. S. Groesbeck adds to this affectionate expression 
of remembrance from Judge Chase, some further words of 
interest, in a letter which will complete the testimony that 
need be recorded respecting the position held by Mr. Eells 
during his professional career: 

Cincinnati, June 11, 1<S72. 
My Dear Sir: I knew your brother, Samuel Eells, very 
well, and admired him very much. He was an extraordinary 
young man, and if he had lived would to-day have been 
known and honored throughout the nation. He had every 
quality to make himself distinguished. He rose here, at our 
Bar, very rapidly ; and had a reputation which has never 
been surpassed among us, by any one so young. Young as 
he was, he made to the Courts and Juries some as able and 
eloquent arguments as \ have ever heard. I never missed an 
opportunity to hear him in any important case. Jt was a 
great pleasure to hear him ; he was logical and classical, and 
at times very grand and eloquent. He was with us but a 
short time, and at once took high rank. With his preparation, 
and talents, and ambition, it could not have been otherwise. 
His death seemed very premature, and we felt it as a great 
loss to us and to the country. I heard him the last time he 
appeared before the public. His health was then broken, and 
it was certain that his career was to be short. He knew it; 
and he had turned away from the world, from his profession, 
and from all his ambitions in connection with this life. The 
occasion was an anniversary of our Bible Society, and it was a 
very sad occasion to me and to others. I saw him shortly 
before he died. He was brave, hopeful and resigned. There 
was nothing foolish about him, and he was equal to any 



228 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

situation in which he found himself. He succeeded in life, his 
death was a success and triumph. It is not often we meet 
such a man. Once known, he can never be forgotten. 

Very respectfully, 

W. S. GllOESBECK. 

Lapse of time and increasing success did not gather any 
charms about the profession, as Mr. Eells became more famil- 
iar with it, nor did he ever regard it as other than a necessity 
which he accepted, and in which he was determined to achieve 
the most possible, while he sacrificed as little as possible in 
doing this. In all his letters that contain any reference to it, 
and in his conversations with friends, when he expressed him- 
self always with great frankness, there was evidence that 
although he admired the science of law, and the study of it, 
in its widest range, gave him great delight, he found a large 
part of its practice -but little ■> in harmony with his nature. 
Of it he says : " It is a great school in which to learn men. 
I believe I have taken more useful lessons of that kind during 
the' short period of my practice than I ever did before, yet 
there are many things in it that are very unpleasant. It 
introduces one to a very dark part of human nature ; fraud, 
perfidy, and rascality of every kind and degree, must be 
directly encountered, and sometimes we find ourselves pledged 
in defence of rascals. I never put myself in that condition 
with my eyes open, and if, on opening the evidence, it is found 
to be a case of this kind, I submit it, after examination of the 
witnesses, to the jury without argument. There is more of 
honesty and principle in the profession than I had been taught 
to believe. There is here a strong disposition, to frown down 
every dishonorable attempt to frustrate the merits of a good 



JUS PROFESSIONAL LIFE AND SUCCESS. 229 

cause, or to defeat the ends of justice. I am much rejoiced 
thai this is so, and if I shall ever have any influence as a 
professional man, that influence shall always be so exerted. 
A lawyer's life is one of severe and incessant labor, and there 
is no shirking from a jot or tittle of the labor which it 
demands. He must be ready at all times, and on all occa- 
sions. He must lay every portion of his cause in the right 
plaee and the right direction. He must be prepared against 
surprise in a hundred different particulars. He must under- 
stand, not only the direct and proper law of the case he may 
have, but also, so that he can have at command all the collat- 
eral law and learning that may by possibility arise in the 
development and discussion of the various questions. And he 
must be armed, cap-a-pie, with every sort and description of 
forensic weapons, heavy arms and light arms, short sword 
and broad sword, eloquence, wit, sarcasm, fancy, and " the 
power of speech to stir men's blood," — knowing, moreover, 
how to use these weapons, when to draw each one, and how 
to wield it with the best effect. It is not too much to say, 
that every cause of any magnitude demands all these qualifi- 
cations, and all this preparation." 

It is not surprising that he succeeded, while under pressure 
of these convictions, notwithstanding the profession failed 
fully to satisfy his wishes. He remained in partnership with 
Mr. Chase for about three years, during which time the busi- 
ness of the office increased, and he became, so well known that 
it was evident he would be wise to assume an independent 
position. After consultation with his friends who advised to 
this course, yet with much doubt respecting his health, which 
the result proved to be well founded, he withdrew from 



230 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

associciation with the most excellent and firm friend, whose 
kindness and established reputation had been of so much 
advantage to him, and whose interest in his success continued 
while he lived, and opened an office of his own in November or 
December 1837. His business multiplied beyond his strength, 
and was of a most desirable kind. His acquaintance soon 
became extended. His reputation passed beyond the limits of 
the city to which he had so lately come as a perfect stranger, 
and the path seemed open to the realization of the most bril- 
liant visions his ambition had ever pictured. 

On the threshold of such a future, the frail constitution, 
which had often before been treacherous to his hopes, and 
which finally yielded to the relentless demands of his energy 
and resolution, gave unmistakable signs of its inability to bear 
him on. In the court room, in the midst of a suit which 
greatly interested him and tasked his powers, he was attacked 
by pleurisy of a severe and aggravated form. With difficulty 
he reached his lodgings, grew worse for a few days, and was 
at length told by physicians in the plainest terms, that his 
labors must be abandoned for a time, must be diminished for 
the future, even if he ever resumed them, and that probably 
he could live in the most favorable circumstances, but very 
few years. Without delay he secured Jordan A. Pugh, a 
young man of fine promise, who was just entering upon the 
profession, as his partner, and made arrangements for absence 
from Cincinnati during the months of the succeeding summer. 
With a heavy heart he turned his back upon the, prospect that 
a little time before seemed so attractive to him, and on horse- 
back journeyed by easy stages towards the northern part of 
Ohio, where his father then resided, hoping that rest and the 



His PROFESSIONAL LIFE AND SUCCESS. 231 

associations and comforts of home might drive away the fears 
that were a weary burden, and restore the health which lie now 
regarded as one of the chief blessings of life. 

He found relief, but not restoration ; and after a season <»i' 
great, yet melancholy satisfaction, both to the family and him- 
self, with the hope, rather than the conviction, that he might 
give attention to some departments of his business that needed 
his care, he returned to the city and resumed his duties. For 
a time his will seemed to conquer the stern foe that had 
opposed his progress from his youth, as had been true repeat- 
edly before ; but not many months had passed in the struggle 
when it became apparent that his enemy was stronger and 
more firmly entrenched than before, while he was weaker, and 
less able in all respects to resist. What others saw with deep 
sorrow, did not escape his own observation, and at last he 
reluctantly accepted the advice of his physicians, and deter- 
mined to seek in a more propitious climate the boon for which 
he longed, but which seemed further than ever from his grasp. 

He lived less than six years in the profession of law, if we 
reckon those fragments when he was absent, and when he was 
disabled though attempting to do something in his office, 
yet it is believed that few young men in our country have 
reached more satisfactory rewards, and left more eminent and 
abiding proofs of success, than did Samuel Eells. 

A few extracts from forensic addresses in cases of special 
interest, will serve to illustrate his skill in dealing with juries, 
and his versatility in popular speech. 

PERORATION IN A CASE OF ASSAULT. 

" Our business, gentlemen, is not so much with the depend- 
ent, a- it is with the public peace and safety, with the interests 



232 MEMORIAL, OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

of the community in which we live. Let not this man imag- 
ine that it is entirely on his account that we have brought 
here the officers of the law, the constituted guardians of 
public justice, and organized this solemn judicial assembly. 
Let him not natter himself that this dense multitude, crowd- 
ing and bending forward, almost breathless with expectation, 
are fixing upon him as the object and center of their solicitude. 
No ! What little interest they might have felt in the defend- 
ent has expired long since, (I saw it fading from their faces 
while the evidence was being given at the stand,) and their 
minds are now occupied only with a feeling for the public 
safety, and with that retributive justice with which they ex- 
pect you to visit this brutal assaulter of a peaceful and unof- 
fending citizen. Yes, gentlemen, their eyes are upon you. 
They know that if, after such an outrage this plaintiff is 
denied exemplary redress at your hands, there is no security 
left for individual rights, and that themselves may be the next 
whose persons shall be violated with impunity. For what to 
me are all the institutions of society and of civil government, 
while it is in the power of every ruffian to deprive me of their 
enjoyment ? What is it to me that you protect my right of 
property, if you will not also protect my person from insult 
and outrage? What to me are all the delightful endearments 
of domestic life, if I may be attacked in the public streets, in 
the presence of my friends, in my own carriage, dashed upon 
the ground, beaten till I am senseless, and sent home to my 
family in such livid deformity that I cannot look upon my 
wife and children for very shame? What indeed is liberty 
itself, if I can be robbed of whatever makes liberty dear and 
sacred, and the villain by whom I am thus maltreated may 
lift his head unpunished ? 



HIS PROFESSIONAL LIFE AND SUCCESS. 233 

It has been asked with a sneer, what actual damage we are 
proved to have sustained, and how we measured the compensa- 
tion which we demand. Gracious Heavens! [s it not enough 
that we have been abused and battered in the public streets, 
that we must be taunted here, in this honorable presence, and 
before your own eyes? We assure the learned counsel for the 
defendent that the artifice of exciting contempt for our 
demand is too little and shallow a trick. It will not succeed. 
It must be known to you, gentlemen, that it is difficult to find 
an exact rule by which to measure an injury like this, or to 
count it out to a jury in dollars and cents. We may count 
the wounds and bruises we have received ; we may number 
the blows ; we may compute the time we have lost, and even 
guass at the consequent derangement suffered in our business. 
But our injury does not depend upon either or all of these, 
though they are all elements of the calculation. It depends 
upon our sensibility to insult, upon our public character and 
standing, and upon our relations to those who have been the 
witnesses of our disgrace. That is the capital outrage, the 
shame, the bitter, burning sense of wrong; — and I never feel 
so deeply the infirmity and inadequacy of human laws, as 
when I come -to them for reparation for an injury like this. 
Hut though you cannot wholly retrieve our wrong, or wipe 
away our disgrace by your verdict, you can teach this bold, 
high-handed violator of your peace and laws that he shall not 
escape with impunity ; and that the abused and insulted 
citizen shall find protection and reparation, as far as possible, 
in the tribunals of his country. We shall now have oppor- 
tunity to see what value you place upon law, upon the persons 
of your fellow citizens, and indeed upon your own ; whether, 



234 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

after we are assaulted with wanton, brutal violence in the face 
of day, we must take redress into our own hands, or, whether 
it is safe to suffer the injury, to restrain our resentment, and 
awaiting the slow forms of law, trust to an adequate though 
late redress in the verdict of a jury." 

EXTRACT FROM AX ADDRESS 

In a case of peculiar interest, where a poor but worthy man had been out- 
rageously assaulted and injured by one who was prominent in society, and 
in which the circumstances excited general and. very deep feeling. This 
will account for the prominence given it. 

" The plea of Guilty is put in here, and of course, what- 
ever we may offer will be confined to the matter of aggra- 
vation ; and I apprehend, though I do not profess to be much 
conversant with the criminal business of this Court, that there 
has seldom, if ever, been presented at this tribunal, a more 
wanton and aggravated outrage on the person of a peaceable 
and unoffending citizen. I say upon the person of the citizen ; 
for though it be true that the complaint is in the name of the 
State, it is nevertheless through the prosecuting witness him- 
self, that the State has received the wrong of which she com- 
plains. And, if the Court please, it affords to my mind, no 
uninteresting comment upon our administration of public 
justice, that the wrongs of the injured citizen are made, both 
in form and in substance, the wrongs of the Commonwealth to 
which he belongs. She does not leave him to sleep over the 
indignity, but makes his quarrel her own, and dignifies it by 
presenting it in her own name to the legal tribunals. And it 
is right. It is the great law of the social compact that the 
citizen, who helps to maintain the government for the common 
good, who has yielded a portion of his own natural right for 



HIS PROFESSIONAL LIFE AND SUCCESS. 235 

the common security, should claim the protection of that 
government, and the benefit of that security which he con- 
tributes to maintain. He is a faithful and obedient subject. 
and servant of the Commonwealth, and it is just that in 
return for this loyalty, she should watch over his rights, 
avenge the indignities ottered to his person, and tlu/ow around 
him the broad shield of her protection. And, sir, in these 
times of misrule, it becomes every man, whether magistrate or 
citizen, to guard and uphold the laws. There is a growing 
disregard of the fixed and stable order of society. The reign 
of the constitution and laws seems to be coming to an end, 
and in their place we are to have personal resentment, private 
grudge, and the ruling passions of the hour. In this alarm- 
ing state of our affairs, our only hope against universal anarchy 
is in the firmness and integrity of magistrates and courts of 
justice. We look to them as the last bulwarks, against whose 
solid walls the waves of individual and factious violence will 
dash and roar in vain. They are the great conservative ele- 
ment of society, the asylum to which constitutional right and 
liberty, hunted down by the bloodhounds of violence and 
misrule may flee for refuge. Let them set themselves in oppo- 
sition to every species of lawlessness and endeavor to give a 
more sound and healthy tone to public sentiment. Let them, 
at all hazards, maintain the supremacy of the laws, and 
whenever they are wantonly violated, let them inscribe the 
penalty in broad and blazing capitals on the forehead of the 
transgressor, and make him a warning and an example. 

It is not from any pleasure which I can take in the punish- 
ment of this prisoner, but from a regard to the well-being of 
society, and for the sake of the common protection that I urge 



236 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

his conviction. For I well know that, let the result of this 
trial be what it may, this man will not escape the final hand 
of Justice. There is a fixed and immutable order of Nature, 
as well in the moral as in the physical world, which holds up 
the penalty of violated law, and drives punishment hard upon 
the heel of guilt. You may acquit, but God and Nature never 
will— 

' Many an act, deemed innocent on earth, 
Is registered in Heaven, and this, no-doubt, 
Will have its record, with a curse annexed. 

There is a tribunal in this man's own breast, from which he 
can never fly. Before it there is no prevarication, no shuffling, no 
chasm in the pleadings, no escape through omission of tech- 
nical forms. There the evidence is clear as the sun in heaven. 
There the witnesses stand, all competen t and unimpeached, and 
like a host of accusing angels, will eternally cry in his ear the 
story of guilt and sin. He may fly to business, but there will 
be a " dreadful sound in his ears," a hot and horrid whisper as 
from the lips of a tormenting fiend. He may seek the table 
of festivity, and strive to drown it in wine and merriment ; 
but there the hand-writing of his condemnation will stare at 
him on the wall, and paleness and trembling will come upon 
him at the banquet. Even in the world of sleep and dreams, 
the icy hand of retribution will be heavy on his heart, and 
wherever he is, whether sleeping or waking, there Justice will 
be with her uplifted sword, to point to this stain of innocent 
blood, and to press her demand. There has been an attempt 
to create a prejudice against him, who in the name of the State 
brings this complaint, because he is poor and unknown, except 
as this trial brings him before us. I admit that this is true. 



HIS PROFESSIONAL LIFE AND SUCCESS. 2o7 

I know that I shall have no reward for my service in this 
Court of one who has his rights, as really as have any of us, 
save the consciousness that I have helped him to support them ; 
and that is reward enough. Let it never be said that in this 
country, even an arraigned prisoner (much less one against 
whom there is no charge) wanted legal counsel and defense 
because he was poor! 1 know there is a vulgar prejudice and 
odium attaching to those who engage in behalf of a man like 
him, whose injuries should have roused the interest of all who 
know of them, and have awakened the sympathy of not a few. 
But I can; not, and I here proclaim that my humble services 
shall ever be ready for the poor, the unfortunate, the oppressed, 
of whatever class, condition, or color ; while I trust in God 
that I shall never stand here, or elsewhere, to draw a veil over 
established guilt, or to screen a villain from the punishment lie 
deserves/' 

EXTRACT ON THE VALUE OP CHARACTER. 

" Men do not suddenly plunge into crime, nor do they sud- 
denly change from any course of conduct to which they have 
been long accustomed, and according to which they have formed 
their feelings, principles and habits. " Can the Ethiopian 
change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye learn 
to do well, who have been accustomed to do evil." Yet, com- 
mon experience will testify that sudden reformations are far 
more frequent than sudden declensions from the way of virtue. 
The reason is plain. The man who has lived uprightly for a 
course of years, has given pledges to society which he cannot 
consent.to forfeit at once and by a single act of atrocious and 
voluntary wickedness. For such an act there must be a long 



238 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

and gradual process of preparatory corruption. He must first 
blind himself to his own best interest. He must break away 
from the force of long established habit. He must break 
down his principles. He must struggle with his conscience. 
He must subdue the very laws of his n ature. Inch by inch 
he must yield the territory which he so long ago conceded to 
the dominion of virtue, and which she holds with the tenacity of 
a prescriptive right. Character, gentlemen, does not consist of 
a few rare and isolated actions, a few splendid deeds which a 
man may have performed during the course of his life. It is 
made up of an infinite number of little things, of all the com- 
mon and comparatively trivial acts and sentiments which fill 
up our daily life. Its growth is like that of the tender sap- 
ling into the tall forest oak, silent and constant. In this pro- 
cess is formed the habit of right doing, and with this are found 
certain great principles which constitute the standard of right 
and wrong, which incorporate with the moral sense and become 
part of the very nature. They become a law far more vital 
and imperative than the enactments of the Statute Book, and 
to suppose that one will suddenly and utterly abandon them 
and plunge headlong into dire and desperate wickedness, is in 
contravention of all human experience, of all moral reasoning, 
and of the whole analogy and constitution of human nature. 
Hence we see why, when one stands charged in a court of jus- 
tice with an infamous crime, the law admits the evidence of a 
blameless character to rebut the charge. If the crime be not 
distinctively proved, this evidence from character is positive 
and overpowering. It forces our convictions, and the law says 
it shall prevail for innocence. And mark, here, how just and 
beautiful is the law. She does not turn a blind or ungrateful 



BIS PROFESSIONAL LIFE AND SUCCESS. 239 

eve toward the man, however humble his condition, who has 
lived an honest life. She marks all his actions ; every victory 
over temptation, every instance of probity, of honesty, of 
fidelity, of generosity ; she observes them all, and records 
them with ever-faithful pen. She treasures up the record, 
and when the hour of trial comes, she reads it aloud in his 
defence. In the common intercourse of society, and for the 
common purposes of social life, a pure and blameless character 
is a beautiful thing. It is a bright and stainless robe upon 
the person. But the law makes it a safeguard as well as an 
ornament. She makes it a coat of mail, of impenetrable 
stuff, that throws back the shafts of malice and persecution 
that would strike him down. And I would say to the indi- 
vidual who stands behind these prosecutions, and for whose 
sole benefit they are, and who has pledged himself to the ruin 
of this young man, that there is a bulwark between him and the 
ruin he would call down upon his head. Beware lest the very 
instrument you have chosen to stab his character and peace be 
wrested from your hands, and turned back upon yourself. 
Beware lest the poisoned chalice you have mingled for another 
be commended by even handed justice to your own lips. 
Justice is described as moving with lame and tardy feet, but 
she will come at last, and bring with her a sure, though late 
redress. You may vex and trouble this young man ; you 
may oppress him with a contest to which his resources are 
unequal; but a jury of his country will do him justice, and 
he will still hold within his own breast, in the proud and 
cheering consciousness of his own integrity, a character which 
shines unsullied as the snow, notwithstanding all the efforts 



240 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

which have been made to defame it. In this he will possess a 
treasure you cannot reach. As William Tell said to Gesler : 

' You cannot take away the grace of Hie, 

Its comeliness of look which virtue gives, 

Its rich attire of honorable deeds, 

Its fair report that's rife on good men's tongues, 

You cannot lay your hand on these, no more 

Than you can pluck its brightness froni the sun, 

Or with polluted finger tarnish it.' " 



CHAPTER VII. 



CONCLUDING- ItEMARKS. 



IN November, 1840, Mr. Eclls went to Cuba, by way of 
Xew Orleans, to pass the ensuing winter, hoping that the 
change of climate would at least prolong his life. It is prob- 
able that this hope was realized, for he was sensibly relieved, 
so far as any immediately alarming symptoms were concerned, 
as soon as he reached more balmy air ; and when he arrived 
at Havana, he was prepared to enjoy with some vigor the out- 
door exercise and general advantages of his new surroundings. 
With the perception of an accurate and careful observer, he 
took note of affairs on that Island, then much less known by 
Americans than now, and his letters contain many references 
to its soil, climate and government ; and the manners, religion, 
and character of the inhabitants, which prove the wisdom, as 
well as range of his judgment respecting them. With charac- 
teristic enthusiasm, he devoted himself to the study of the 
Spanish language, and during the lew months of his stay, so 
far mastered it that he could speak it with some fluency, and 
had read not a little of its literature. This acquirement 
afforded him great satisfaction after his return to his own 
country, and his friends were often delighted by the additional 



242 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

resources thus furnished him for both their amusement and 
profit from his conversation. 

After the winter had passed, the increase of heat began to 
debilitate him, and in April he returned to New York, still 
feeble but in good spirits, and feeling that the experiment had 
accomplished for him all that he had reason to hope. The 
next months, until September, were enjoyed by him in visiting 
among relatives and friends, and in the quiet of his father's 
house, his strength gradually increasing, and his prevailing 
hopefulness more and more possessing him, so that he 
resolved to go once more to Cincinnati, and attempt the duties 
from which he had so long been exiled. This attempt, how- 
ever, convinced him that his days for work were gone, and 
he determined to make no further effort to resist disease, but 
adjust his business as best he could, and prepare to die. His 
many friends did all in their power to make him comfortable, 
and he most tenderly appreciated all their attentions, yet hav- 
ing no home of his own, he was obliged to suffer from the 
sense of dependence on others, which in any circumstances 
would be a burden to one of his temperament. Could any 
experience have removed this feeling, it would have been that 
which cheered him during these last months of life; and 
though it may seem improper to mention any special instance 
among the many proofs of friendship which he enjoyed, both 
himself and his friends, could they be consulted, would insist 
that one name be placed in these memoirs with gratitude, 
because of the marked and beautiful exhibition of affectionate 
esteem that name always brings to mind. In the family of 
Mr. S. W. Pomeroy, a gentleman upon whom Mr. Eel Is had 
no claims for special courtesy, but whose delicate yet evidently 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 243 

sincere and emphatic expression of interest, it was well-nigh 
impossible to withstand, he had all the comforts of a delight- 
ful Christian home during the weeks of suffering that preceded 
his death. With unwearied tenderness they ministered to his 
relief, and as it was not possible for any of his relatives except 
one brother, to be with him in his sickness, they watched and 
served by his bedside as kindred by blood. Under their roof 
and surrounded by these friends, he peacefully died, in posses- 
sion of his faculties, and in the confidence of Christian hope, 
on Sabbath morning, March 13, 1842, aged thirty-two years. 
The funeral was attended on the following Wednesday, in the 
Second Presbyterian Church, of which Dr. Lyman JBeecher 
was pastor, and that eminent clergyman, who knew and loved 
him well, preached an appropriate and affecting discourse. 
The Court adjourned on that day, and the judges and members 
of the bar attended the funeral, wearing badges of mourning* 
The body was interred in the city cemetery, where it remained 
till the year 1859, when it was removed to Cleveland and 
placed in the family lot in Woodland Cemetery. There, 
surrounded by those to whom he was very dear, and whom he 
loved with rare devotion, he calmly sleeps. His life was short, 
but it was crowded with usefulness, aud beauty, and honor. 
In addition to what has been written in this volume, 
there are a few prominent characteristics of Mr. Eells, which 
should have distinct mention, that those who were not person- 
ally acquainted with him may know him as he was. He had 
that peculiarity in a marked degree which ever defies descrip- 
tion, but is ever powerful in effect, and which for lack of a 
better term we call personal magnetism. This appeared in his 
boyhood, was a charm in his manhood in its various relations, 



244 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

was a large element of his power as a public speaker, and gave 
him unwonted influence every where. His manner, his voice, 
his face, his strangely beautiful yet sometimes flashing blue 
eye, conspired to produce this effect; so that whatever may 
have been the merit of what he uttered, it would be impos- 
sible rightly to estimate its interest or force unless he was 
seen and heard when uttering it. This power attracted to 
him, and bound to him with more than ordinary devotion the 
long list of friends whom he so highly valued, and who 
remember him after so many years with such freshness of 
affection. It made him almost an idol in the sacred circle of 
his family. It became the secret of most of that influence 
which attends his name in the society he founded, and almost 
makes his spirit the presiding genius in this noble company of 
men, nho even from his writings catch something of his 
personal enthusiasm and fire. 

Connected with this was his remarkable ability and ease in 
conversation. The accuracy of his scholarship, the wide 
range of his reading, his command of language, and his social 
disposition all contributed to his excellence in this grace, which 
is often deficient in men who are otherwise eminent. By 
common consent he became the centre and life of any circle in 
which he might be, and his resources never failed him, nor did 
any moods disappoint those who anticipated the wisdom and 
the wit which always abounded in his intercourse with others. 
He had the rare gift of adaptation to the company by whom 
he was surrounded, so that he was every where welcome ; and 
the order with which he was wont to put aside for use what- 
ever material came to his hand, secured that he was never 
token unawares. Instructive, sympathetic, sparkling, sincere, 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 245 

self-forgetful, he exhibited the perfection of conversation, 
often leaving those in doubt, who had listened to his public 
addresses whether to admire him more on the platform, or in 
the parlor. Probably, the real man was more manifest in his 
social life, as he even- impressed others, unconsciously to him- 
self, with the evidence of what one may accomplish for their 
pleasure and profit, who makes the walks of society radiant 
with the contributions both of his genius and his heart. 
Indeed, much as he was honored for his forensic and literary 
productions, and almost extravagant as have been some of the 
encomiums passed upon him as thus remembered, it is no 
doubt true, that by those who knew him intimately, and asso- 
ciated with him long, in the easy and friendly converse of 
more private life, his acquirements and power are still most 
highly regarded. Thus to know him was to value and love 
him. 

Prominent among his characteristics, finally, should be 
ranked his unostentatious yet avowed and controlling piety. 
His natural independence made it impossible for him to 
receive the bible and religion at the hands of others. Xot 
even from his parents, whom he greatly revered, would he 
accept without thorough examination what he regarded as of 
such vital import to himself. Hence he early became a sys- 
tematic and thorough student of the Word of God, and his 
library in after years, abounded in books written in its defence 
or illustration. The result was an unwavering conviction of 
the divine origin and authority of these scriptures, and an 
unqualified acknowledgment of the obligations they impose. 
When quite young he assumed these obligations by beginning 
a Christian life, nor did he ever hesitate to attempt duties 



246 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

which many young men neglect, even though they confess 
them to be binding. For reasons which he deemed sufficient, 
but the effect of which he regretted afterwards, he did not 
make public profession of religion until he had been two or 
three years in Cincinnati, when through the influence of Dr. 
Beecher he was induced to unite with his church. His piety 
always appeared in the character and life which were open to 
men's scrutiny, rather than in the words by which it might be 
proclaimed. It cheered and strengthened him in many dark 
hours of embarrassment as to professional success. It gave 
him courage in that life-long struggle with the disease which 
brought him to his grave at last. It modified and beautified 
his temperament, and gave him self-control and resolution 
that often excited the remark of those who knew him best. 
And it enabled him to look steadily into the face of death 
without a shudder, and beyond without fear. His letters 
throughout contain passages, eloquent with the expressions of 
faith and hope. His life throughout, was proof of what a 
sincere, earnest, cheerful Christian man may be. There is not 
one who knew him, who does not rejoice that in addition to all 
the talents and acquisitions for which he was distinguished, 
Samuel Eells was worthy of this record, that he was an intel- 
ligent and true servant of God. 

His last public address was before the Young Men's Bible 
Society, at its anniversary, held on the 7th of November, 1841, 
in the Second Presbyterian Church. He was very feeble at 
the time, but well aware that this would be the last opportu- 
nity lie would have to let his voice be heard in support of a 
cause he greatly loved, he was very anxious to comply with 
the urgent request that he should speak. The occasion seemed 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 247 

to inspire him with special vigor, and he spoke for half an 
hour with such eloquence and power as few had ever heard 

from him before. The regret has often been expressed that 
there was not an accurate report of this address ; but only an 
outline of it, somewhat carefully prepared has been preserved, 
and with this will end these memoirs of his life and writings. 



ADDRESS 



f 



BEFORE THE 



ITY pIBLE OOCIETY, 



OF CINCINNATI. 



The following resolution offered by Samuel Eells, Esq., and 

seconded by Rev. John T. Brooke, was adopted : 

Resolved, That the Bible, by being made effectual for the 
purification of the human heart by the influence of the Holy 
Spirit, is an adequate remedy for all the evils of man's social and 
political condition ; and that it is the only effectual means 
for the moral restoration of the World. 

Mr. Eells addressed the chair, as follows : 

Mr. President : — This resolution contemplates a remedy for 
the moral condition of the world. Of course it presupposes a 
moral disease : — in other words it supposes the fallen and 
degenerate condition of man, and that some remedy is needed 
to restore him to his original rectitude. It is true, Sir, that 
the human heart has always been reluctant to admit this con- 
demnation of itself: and it is a curious fact in the philosophy 
of the human character, that amid all the evidences of its 
deep degeneracy, poets, and moralists, and philosophers, have 
always been declaiming on the dignity of man ; studiously 
forgetting all the moral turpitude of his nature in those lofty 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIBLE SOCIETY. 249 

intellectual distinctions which elevate and ennoble him in the 

scale of being. 

Jhit, Sir, after all that has been said and sung in honor of 
human nature, we do nevertheless know that this world is not 
what it should be. We do know that there is some great, and 
universal, and radical defect in the moral constitution and 
character of man. 

In the first place, our own consciousness attests this feet. 
No human being can look into his own breast, and surveying 
with a strict and impartial eye, the operations of his own 
spirit, can say that all is right there ; that all is goodness, and 
benevolence, and rectitude ; and that there are wanting no 
remedial influences to restore upon him that perfect and divine 
image which was originally stamped by the hand of God upon 
the soul. " If I should say I am perfect, even that would 
prove me perverse." Every man feels within himself the 
action of moral evil; — the stirring of those selfish and malig- 
nant passions, which, acting out, and at large among mankind 
have filled the earth with violence, and overspread it with 
desolation from age to age. 

But if any one should still doubt whether the world really 
needs such a restorative process, let him look at history. 
This, Sir, is evidence of a most potent and peculiar kind : — 
evidence not to be controverted, nor to be mistaken. History 
is man's own portraiture of himself: the judgment which he 
has passed on his own character ; the account which he has 
given of his own nature and his own actions in all countries 
and ages of the world ; and which he has sealed up in solemn 
and imperishable record. And, History ! What is it but a 
book of blood f One long, dark, and almost unbroken record 



250 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

of human folly, and human wickedness? Ambition, with 
fierce and blood-shot eyes, and both hands dipped in gore, is 
the presiding genius of the page. Its heroes are the imperial 
robbers and wholesale butchers of the human race. Cities 
sacked and robbed, kings assassinated and deposed, armies 
slaughtered in a day, nations invaded and subjugated, and 
trodden under foot, are its deeds of glory. Viewed through 
the glass of history, the world seems one vast Acaldema ; — the 
theatre of a horrid succession of tragedies, upon which, not 
individuals only, but States and Empires have been by turns 
the actors and the victims. 

But again. The order of Providence, its established course 
of dealing with the human race, is a perpetual and most mel- 
ancholy witness of the solemn and affecting fact of man's 
entire defection from the great laws of his moral being ; — his 
utter estrangement and alienation from his Maker. For Sir, it 
is not only by violence and rapine, not only by wars of con- 
quest and extermination that the depopulation of this world 
has been carried on. Famine and Pestilence, Fire, Flood, 
Earthquakes, and Diseases innumerable, have ever been per- 
mitted to scourge and lay waste the earth. From the creation 
up to the present moment, the human family have been 
moving in one long, grand, funeral procession to the place 
appointed for all living. Less than thirty years is the average 
lot of human life. Three times during every century does 
this dark and brutish earth call home an entire generation of 
her children ; and thus, like an unnatural mother, she garners 
back into her bosom, age after age, the uncounted millions of 
our race. Sir, what mean these solemn appointments of 
Heaven, by which " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth 



ADDRKss BEFORE THE BIBLE SOCIETY. 251 

in pain together until now?" Why is it that man ever enters 
the world with a cry, and leaves it with a struggle and a 
groan : and that his little inch of time is burdened with such 
numberless calamities which baffle alike his wisdom to foresee, 
and his power to prevent? Philosophy has never been able to 
respond to these questions ; but He who has brought life and 
immortality to light has furnished the answer, and it stands 
recorded in that sacred volume. It is, that "all flesh has 
corrupted its way upon the earth ;" that " the earth is cursed 
for man's sake," and against man himself has gone out that 
righteous decree of offended Heaven, " Dust thou art, and 
unto dust must thou return." 

The same revelation informs us that this was not the orig- 
inal condition of mankind ; and this truth also finds a confir- 
mation in . the general history of the race, and in the most 
interior responses of our common consciousness. 

The traditions of all nations reach back to a primeval age 
of happiness and innocence. In the universal human soul 
there seems to be an inborn sense of some early and great 
calamity that has despoiled it of its native glory, and shrouded 
it in darkness. Even in the midst of its ruin, — in the midst 
of all its errors and corruptions, it retains some images of a 
pristine perfection, — some dark yet grand remembrance of an 
original likeness to the Godhead. 

Here, then, is the great leading fact regarding humanity ; — 
that it is suffering under a deep seated, and universal moral 
malady : and upon this fact arises the great question "Is there 
no balm in Gilead ? no physician there?" Must this world 
be forever given up to the reign of sin ? Must it be forever 
the prey of violence and crime, and all selfish and baleful 



252 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

passions ? Must wars and commotions forever rage and toss 
upon its bosom, and dash in pieces the nations? 

Sir, there is a remedy : and when in the language of this 
resolution, we point to the Bible as that remedy, and declare 
it to be the only remedy, let us not be misunderstood. We 
do not apprehend, Sir, that even the Bible itself, unaccom- 
panied by the Spirit of truth to make it effectual on the hearts 
and consciences of men, would ever effect the moral restora- 
tion of the world. It is very true — as has been often admit- 
ted by infidels themselves, — that the Bible is a perfect code 
of morals; and herein it is distinguished from every other 
book. 

But, Sir, its efficacy — its remedial, restorative power, does 
not consist in this distinction. Why, Sir, what can a mere 
code of morals do, however perfect, to transform the human 
heart ? When was it ever heard that a man was renewed in 
the spirit of his mind, and conformed to the moral image of 
his Maker, by such a book, for instance, as the " Morals " of 
Seneca, or the " Offices " of Tully, or the " Dialogues " of 
Plato? Never — Sir, Never. Cicero himself, one of the 
greatest of all the ancient philosophers, and the best man too, 
in my judgment, that all heathen antiquity can boast, has 
explicitly declared that so far as he was informed, there never 
had beeu a philosopher who had been able either to reform 
himself or his disciples. And I appeal to the knowledge and 
observation of every one who hears me, when I stand here 
and declare that there never was an instance in the whole 
history of mankind, in which the mere human teaching of 
morality has effected a radical and permanent change in the 
human character — such a change, I mean, Sir, as that which 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIBLE SOCIETY. 253 

the Bible effectuates, and which it denominates, significantly — 
the world has no term like it — a change of heart The power 
of the Bible then, as a remedial agent, does not depend on the 
fact that it embodies and holds up to the understanding and 
consciences of men a perfect moral law ; but it consists in this 
fact ; that there is attending the promulgation of that perfect 
law, an influence which accompanies the teaching of no other 
ethical or moral code or system whatever; — an invisible and 
almighty agency acting directly on the selfish and reluctant 
heart of man, subduing the most inveterate depravity of his 
nature, changing all his objects of supreme desire, securing, 
even for the law which condemns him, his affection and obedi- 
ence ; substituting new objects of living, and new principles 
of action : new purposes, new desires, new hopes — the ele- 
ments and beginnings of a sublime and spiritual life; and all 
this too, in a manner perfectly conformable to every known 
principle and law of his constitution. 

And, Sir, this regenerating and transforming agency of the 
Holy Spirit is forever pledged tc the circulation of this book, 
by the promise of the Savior Himself. And here it is — 
here, on this pledge, — this everlasting rock of promise, that we 
build our only hope for society and for the human race. You 
remember, Sir, when our blessed Savior had completed the 
great provision for man's redemption by the sacrifice of Him- 
self, and heaved the bar of death, and led out His little flock as 
farasto Bethany, whence He was about to ascend in a cloud to 
the realms of glory — you remember what were His last words 
to His disciples : "Go ye into all the world and preach the 
Gospel to every creature ;" and " Lo, lam with you always, 
even unto the end of the world!" u I cm with you /" With 



254 MEMORIAL OF SAMUEL EELLS. 

whom ? Not merely those who then heard the gracious words 
that fell from His lips, and followed Him with wondering eyes 
as he ascended : for with what propriety could He say to those 
particular individuals, that He would be with them to the end 
of the world f No, Sir; His omniscient eye ranged through 
all coming time, and rested upon all, of whatever name, and 
in whatever age, who should undertake the circulation of this 
sacred volume with a sincere desire to obey His last injunction, 
and to co-operate with Him in the redemption of the world. 
It forecast the scene that is here presented. It rested even 
upon this little association ; — upon you, Sir, who preside there, 
and upon you and you ; and to all of us who are here to-night, 
He addresses that heavenly rhetoric — those sublime and won- 
derful words "Lo ! I am with you" How " with you ?" 
ci With you " for what purpose ? To make this, my Gospel, 
which I enjoin you to disseminate among all nations, effectual 
on the human heart, so that it shall not return void, but shall 
accomplish that which I please, and prosper in the things 
whereto I sent it. 

And now, Sir, mark the fulfillment of that promise. 
Eighteen hundred years have since rolled away, and from that 
day to this, the Bible has been achieving its triumphs. From 
that day to this, it has been the pioneer — the vanguard of 
civilization and science, and the arts, and civil liberty all over 
the globe. And, Sir, never w T as the promise faster hasting to 
its accomplishment — never was this remedy doing its great 
work more effectually than at this moment. The heralds of 
the cross are carrying the Word of Life into every land, and 
translating it into every language. The voice of its triumphs 
is borne to our cars on every wind. It comes to us from every 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE BIBLE SOCIETY. 255 

quarter of the globe; from India, Persia, China, Australia 
Greece, and the far islands of the Pacific Paganism has 
received a blow that has sounded over the world ; and like 
some huge, misshapen monster, struck with a mortal dart, rolls 
and tosses on its bed of pain. While I am now speaking, 
the death-knell of Mohammedanism is tolling from the towers 
of Constantinople; and the ground of the whole Turkish 
Empire will soon be occupied by Christian nations. Africa 
too, oppressed, despairing Africa, is shaking off her chains, 
and looking up for the tokens of her redemption. On every 
side, the dark cloud which has overshadowed the nations, is 
lifting, and the light of everlasting day is breaking in. " Lift 
up your heads, O ye gates ! even lift them up, ye everlasting 
doors, and the King of Glory shall come in !" O, Sir, we live 
in the twilight of a heavenly day. Behold, how it purples 
the eastern sky ! Behold, how the clouds and mountain tops 
around redden with the dawn ! Welcome, welcome — Millen- 
ial Jubilee — Sabbath of the World! Our eyes indeed will not 
witness its meridian splendors ; but, " He is faithful that 
promised." We shall all go to our graves; but the Bible will 
live ; and the Bible Society will live ; and the work of the 
World's regeneration will go on. Yes, Sir, the time will 
surely come — God speed the blessed day! — when all nations 
shall be brought under the power of His grace and the glory 
of His Gospel; when "the kingdom, and the dominion, and 
the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall 
be given to the people of the Saints of the Most High :" — 

" The dwellers in the vales, and ou the rocks, 
shout to each other, ami the mountain tops 
from distant mountains, catch the flying joy : 
'Till, nation after nation taught -the strain, 
Earth rolls the rapturous 'Ho&anna' round." 



biESASy 0F congress 



029 785 392 2 



w 

Hi 
p 



■ 



P 






